In Asian media this week: No trade deal exceptions for US allies. Plus: An expert in a government of flunkies; Sex-scandal monks had lives of status and privilege; Corruption stymies Myanmar earthquake recovery; Anwar’s leadership glow starting to fade; ‘Comrade’ is out-of-fashion in Communist China.

Donald Trump is making an example of South Korea and Japan, to show there are no exceptions to his tariff policy, not even for allies, analysts say.

The Korea Herald reported the two countries were taken aback when Trump took aim at them, dashing any expectations of preferential treatment.

In almost identical letters sent to the leaders of the two countries, Trump said tariffs of 25% would apply from 1 August, unless they dismantled what he called unfair trade barriers.

“Trump wants to make an example out of Korea and Japan, the two closest allies with large US trade surpluses, strong industrial bases and deep security ties with Washington,” said Heo Yoon, an international relations professor at Seoul’s Sogang University. “He is trying to show that there’s no exception when it comes to tariffs, allies or not.”

Indonesia has signed a trade pact, Trump announced this week. The Jakarta Post quoted him as saying it involved significant purchase commitments.

The tariff deal is similar to that signed with Vietnam earlier this month. Indonesian exports to the US would be subject to a 19% tariff, below the 32% rate Trump had previously threatened. The rate for US exports to Indonesia would be zero.

In addition, Indonesia would spend US$15 billion on US energy products and US$4.5 billion on American agricultural products. It would also buy 50 Boeing jets.

At the same time, Indonesia has reached general political agreement with the EU on a comprehensive free trade pact and negotiations on the commercial details are being accelerated. Tariffs on most Indonesian exports to the EU would eventually be zero.

The Jakarta Post said in an editorial the deal was a diplomatic triumph for President Prabowo Subianto. “The unexpected breakthrough was largely influenced by [Trump’s] unilateral tariff war,” the editorial said.

Thailand is following a similar path to that trodden by Vietnam and Indonesia and is willing to offer a zero tariff rate for 90% of US exports – about 10,000 products, Bangkok Post said.

Trump has threatened a tariff for Thai exports to the US of 36% but a senior Thai businessman said he expects the tariff would be in the 18-20% range. The proposal would be presented to Washington in a conference call on Thursday night, the paper said.

Colby, the AUKUS man, is Pentagon’s deep thinker

Elbridge Colby is known in Australia as the man who is conducting the US Administration’s review of AUKUS and who wanted to know if the nuclear-powered submarines Australia would acquire under the pact would be used to defend Taiwan.

But, according to a profile published by Singapore’s The Straits Times, he is a rare person in the Trump government – a deep thinker in a defence/intelligence establishment run by flunkies.

Donald Trump has been gutting the “deep state”, the story says, and turning it into a "shallow state" – a government in which careers depend on sycophancy more than expertise.

“But even a government of the shallow, by the shallow, for the shallow needs depth in certain functions,” says the profile, written by Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth. “One such official is Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Elbridge Colby.”

Colby is masterminding the next National Defence Strategy, which is due within weeks.

Kluth thinks that if Colby has his way, the review will say America is overextended and exploited by its friends and must do less in Europe and the Middle East, to focus on the defining conflict to come – confrontation with China, at first over Taiwan, but ultimately over hegemony in Asia.

Colby is a Wasp (White Anglo-Saxon Protest), a graduate of Harvard and Yale and the grandson of a former CIA director. The erudite Colby, the story says, is a curious person to exercise such power in a Pentagon run by an under-qualified TV personality.

The story says Colby was influential in Trump’s first term and later lined up with those who spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. “Mr Colby … has — or has learned to present — another side, one that has kept him close to the power circles around Mr Trump,” it says.

Note: Much of the Australian media’s discussion of Colby’s request, that Australia and Japan say what role they would play in the event of a US war with China, has treated it as though it were a normal and reasonable question.

Global Times, an official Beijing newspaper, not surprisingly has a different view. “This amounts to pressuring them to commit to taking frontline role in the event of a ‘Taiwan contingency’,” the paper says in a editorial. “…It also constitutes a blatant interference in the independent foreign policy positions of its allies.”

Monks’ disgrace exposes Thai Buddhism’s feudal system

At the heart of the monks’ sex scandal dominating Thailand’s news and social media is the feudal structure of the country’s clerical system.

What has made the scandal so different, and so riveting, is the number of high-ranking, high-status monks involved.

Sanitsuda Ekachai, a journalist who often writes about Thai Buddhism, said the monks involved had influence, status and wealth.

“In Thailand’s deeply feudal clerical system, these monks live in privilege, surrounded by wealth and deference,” she wrote in a Bangkok Post commentary. “People prostrate before them. Few dare question them.”

Sanitsuda said the scandal exposed lies and hypocrisy among leading monks, in a country where about 95% of people are at least nominally Buddhist.

The scandal came to light with the secretive disrobing last month of a senior monk called Phra Thepvachirapamok, who fled to Laos, reportedly to evade allegations of corruption and threats by a woman known as “Sika Golf” to reveal a sexual affair.

By this week, nine monks had left the monkhood. Bangkok Post reported their careers had been ended by the woman, who had been linked to about a dozen monks from six provinces.

Police have arrested the woman, whose real name is Wilawan Emsawat. Her nickname is Golf and Sika means female devotee. Police found evidence that a senior monk had transferred 380,000 baht (about A$18,000) to her from a temple account. The paper said the monk, a temple abbot, had left the monkhood and admitted transferring the money to her.

Police had earlier searched her house and found five phones with 80,000 photos and clips of her with senior monks from many famous temples.

Police recorded 385 million baht (more than A$18 million) had been transferred to Wilawan’s accounts over the past three years, but most of the money was lost to gambling websites.

An opinion piece on the Thai PBSWorld news site said Wilawan was an unintentional whistleblower. “Whatever arises [will be] inherently beneficial,” the commentary said. “We have only lost those who pretend to be monks by wearing the saffron robes.”

Rules, procedures and bribery are barriers to rebuilding

Here is the official toll of the destruction caused by the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar on 28 March: more than 60,000 homes, almost 7000 schools and almost 600 hospitals and clinics were destroyed. Tens of thousands of homes were badly damaged and remain uninhabitable. Countless buildings are on the brink of collapse, but they have not been demolished.

Repairs and demolition are being delayed by the application of municipal regulations, the need to bribe officials to win approval, lack of quality building materials, and shortages of skilled labour and professional engineers.

One man, a resident of a township near Mandalay, told his story to Frontier Myanmar, the Burmese exile online magazine.

The pillars, stairs and walls of his three-storey home had large cracks, he said. He hired a contractor to do repairs but then was held up by the need to get local government approval. The contractor submitted an application but had not been granted permission after more than a month.

“I think this is because we didn’t bribe them,” the homeowner said. “I told my contractor I would pay the cost of any bribe and he said he would handle it.”

An experienced civil engineer in Mandalay said the municipal regulations were necessary to enforce basic standards and ensure structural integrity.

But corruption was making a mockery of the rules, Frontier said – particularly when there was a backlog of applications. Bribes ensured quick approval, while skipping the procedures required by the regulations.

“Many are bypassing the process by paying bribes,” the engineer said.

Myo Thant, a seismologist who was vice-chair of the Myanmar Earthquake Committee until his resignation shortly after the 2021 military coup, is worried about the corrupt practices.

“Earthquakes don’t kill people – buildings do,” he said.

Malaysians protest over taxes, subsidies and nepotism

Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, this week posted a cryptic social media message. “Coming soon: an extraordinary tribute to the people of Malaysia,” it said.

The post appeared just hours after almost 1000 lawyers had marched to the prime minister’s office, South China Morning Post said. They were protesting alleged government meddling in judicial appointments.

The government has faced mounting criticism over a recent expansion of taxes on goods and services, the story said. It also plans to end blanket petrol subsidies later this year – in a country where the number of privately owned vehicles is greater than the population.

Anwar’s administration has also been attacked for selling a stake in Malaysia Airport Holdings to a company owned by US investment giant Blackrock, a company said by critics to support Israel.

And Anwar is weathering a nepotism scandal after his daughter, Nurul Izzah, was elected deputy president of his People’s Justice Party.

It follows that his social media post was treated with derision. “Is it a new tax?” one critic asked. “New subsidy removal? The sale of other assets to Blackrock?”

SCMP was not alone in reporting Anwar’s woes. Ucanews.com, the Roman Catholic Asian news site, noted in a feature article that less than three years after finally being sworn in as prime minister, Anwar’s reformist glow was fading – among supporters as well as opponents.

The story noted Anwar continued to take foreign trips but his image as a statesman was at odds with his image as a distracted leader ignoring domestic issues.

“At home, people deal with inflation, rising prices and subsidy cuts,” the story said. “The public sees little sign of shared sacrifice or reform.”

Party greeting out of place in an unequal society

China may be run by the Communist Party, but the traditional honorific or greeting of “comrade” has gone out of fashion.

It remains a formal mode of address within the party but its use is confined to official settings, says Zhou Xin, a senior editor with South China Morning Post.

“Comrade” (tongzhi) is still used to address a young clerk in a government office, Zhou says, or a police officer on the street, but it sounds old-fashioned and “comrade used without a full name is the equivalent of a bland ‘hello’ to someone who doesn’t look important,” he says.

Zhou says a recent piece in the People’s Daily argued that China should bring back “comrade” as a common form of address.

But, he says, the original meaning of comrade, with its implied values of equality and solidarity, has lost its relevance in a society with wealth and social divisions.

“How could an employer address a soon-to-be-sacked employee as a comrade,” he says. “And wouldn’t it be ridiculous to call Chinese tycoons comrades when their net personal wealth was in the billions of dollars?”

A further complication is that comrade can be used to refer to a homosexual male. Zhou says: “He is a tongzhi means he is gay.”

Chinese people have coined many terms to take the place of “comrade”. Examples Zhou gives include: meinu (beautiful lady); xiaojie (miss); xiansheng (mister); dage (big brother), dashu (big uncle) or daye (big grandpa).

“Suggestions of bringing [comrade] back reflect a desire for an equal and fair society,” he says. “But, alas, such a society cannot be achieved simply by calling each other ‘comrade’.”

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.