Features
Tariffs as business deals?
From White House to Wall Street:
I am going to examine the financial market repercussions of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tariff policies, focusing on equities, bonds, derivatives, and interest rates. It explores how asymmetric information and alleged insider trading influenced market dynamics, highlighting the challenges posed to market integrity and investor confidence.
In 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration implemented a series of tariffs targeting major trading partners, including China, Canada, and Mexico. These policies aimed to protect domestic industries but resulted in significant volatility across global financial markets. The sudden shifts in trade policy introduced uncertainty, affecting various asset classes and raising concerns about the exploitation of insider information.
In response to escalating market turmoil and international pressure, President Trump announced a 90-day deferral on certain tariffs, via social media on April 9, 2025. However, the announcement’s ambiguity led to continued market instability.
Pre-Tariff Market Conditions
(February 2025)
In February 2025, US financial markets were experiencing relative stability. The S&P 500 was trading near record highs, buoyed by strong corporate earnings and positive economic indicators. Interest rates remained steady, with the 10-year Treasury yield hovering around 3.9%, reflecting moderate inflation expectations and a balanced economic outlook. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), a measure of market volatility, was subdued, indicating investor confidence.
Impact on Financial Markets
Equities and Traditional Investment Strategies
The announcement of tariffs led to a sharp decline in US stock markets. Major indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite, experienced significant losses, with the Nasdaq entering bear market territory after a 5.82% drop. The traditional 60/40 investment strategy, allocating 60% to equities and 40% to bonds, proved ineffective during this period, as both asset classes suffered losses due to rising bond yields and falling stock prices (Figure 1).
Market Indices (S&P 500, Nasdaq, Dow Jones): Major crashes occurred on April 3–4, 2025, following the tariff imposition. Slight recovery or stabilisation followed Trump’s deferral tweet on April 9, but markets dipped sharply again on April 10 (Table 1).
Market Reaction to Tariff Imposition
(April 2–5, 2025)
* April 3, 2025: The S&P 500 plummeted by 4.88%, the Nasdaq Composite fell by 5.97%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined by 3.98%. The Russell 2000 entered bear market territory, dropping over 20% from its recent peak.
* April 4, 2025: Markets continued their downward trajectory. The S&P 500 fell an additional 5.97%, the Nasdaq Composite decreased by 5.82%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 5.50%.
* April 5, 2025: The newly imposed tariffs officially took effect, further exacerbating market volatility and investor uncertainty.
* Over this period, US stock markets lost approximately $6.6 trillion in value, marking the largest two-day loss in history.
Market Response to Tariff Deferral
(April 9–11, 2025)
* April 10, 2025: Despite the deferral, the S&P 500 declined by approximately 15%, and long-term Treasury bonds faced significant selling pressure. The US dollar weakened, and gold prices surged as investors sought safe-haven assets.
* April 11, 2025: Consumer sentiment plummeted, with the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index dropping to 50.8, the second-lowest level since records began in 1952. This decline reflected widespread economic pessimism amid the ongoing trade tensions.
Bond Market and Interest Rates
The bond market reacted to the tariffs with increased yields, reflecting investor concerns about inflation and economic growth. The US 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.358%, indicating expectations of higher interest rates. This rise in yields contributed to the decline in bond prices, further challenging traditional investment strategies.
10-Year Treasury Yield: Climbed steadily from 3.9% to 4.358% (April 2–21), suggesting increased inflation expectations and risk premium. The bond market experienced significant fluctuations during this period. Therefore, investors demanded higher returns for perceived increased risk. This rise in yields indicated expectations of higher inflation and potential economic slowdown due to the tariffs. (Table 2).
Derivatives and Market Volatility
The derivatives market, including options and futures, experienced heightened volatility in response to tariff announcements. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), often referred to as “Wall Street’s fear index,” spiked to its highest level since 2020, closing at 45.31 points. This surge in volatility presented both risks and opportunities for investors, particularly those with access to timely information.
VIX Volatility Index: Rose from 19 on April 2 to a peak of 45.31 on April 4, indicating extreme market fear. The VIX spiked to 45.31, its highest level since 2020, indicating heightened market anxiety (Table 3).
Asymmetric Information and Insider Trading Allegations
Allegations of insider trading emerged during the tariff saga, highlighting concerns about asymmetric information. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene faced scrutiny for stock transactions made shortly before tariff announcements, including purchases in companies like Amazon and Tesla, and the sale of Treasury bills. While Greene denied insider knowledge, the timing of these trades raised questions about the potential exploitation of non-public information (The Times, 2025).
Additionally, unusual trading patterns in S&P 500 futures preceding major policy shifts suggested possible insider activity. Although direct evidence linking these trades to White House insiders remains inconclusive, the patterns underscore the challenges in detecting and preventing insider trading in policy-driven markets (Los Angeles Times, 2025).
Tariff Decisions as Business Deals
While tariffs are typically seen as instruments of trade policy aimed at protecting domestic industries or rebalancing trade deficits, the Trump administration’s 2025 tariff imposition and abrupt deferral appear less rooted in strategic policy and more akin to short-term market manipulations. These decisions unfolded not through institutional processes or legislative debates, but rather through presidential tweets and sudden reversals, strongly suggesting a deal-making mindset characteristic of business negotiations rather than public governance.
The Role of Asymmetric Information and Market Elites
Insider trading is traditionally associated with illegal access to non-public corporate information. However, in this case, asymmetric political information—known only to a select few close to power—may have created an opportunity to profit.
Market actors with proximity to decision-makers, or even sophisticated algorithms tied to social media monitoring, could have anticipated the tariff deferral.
Billionaire investors and influencers like Elon Musk, who maintain both financial influence and political access, are often speculated to benefit from such opaque decision-making environments. The quick reversal of tariffs led to a surge in tech stocks, many of which form the core holdings of large institutional investors, hedge funds, and elite entrepreneurs.
For example: The Nasdaq rebounded by 1.5% following the deferral tweet. Options trading volumes spiked on tech-heavy indices, indicating pre-positioning by well-informed actors. Reports from Bloomberg and Reuters noted unusual activity in Tesla call options shortly before the deferral (Reuters, 2025; Bloomberg Markets, 2025).
A Business Deal Mindset
Trump’s own language underscores the deal-making philosophy. The President tweeted that the tariffs were a “strong hand in negotiations” and “paused for talks with China”, using terms more common in corporate boardrooms than diplomatic channels. This rhetoric, combined with the lack of institutional transparency, raises serious concerns about the manipulation of public policy for private gains.
In this light, the administration’s behaviour is not reflective of classical economic policy objectives like comparative advantage or strategic protectionism. Instead, it aligns with the wealth-maximising tactics of a private enterprise, where the aim is to control narrative, timing, and volatility to benefit select stakeholders.
Conclusions
More critically, the Trump tariff saga of 2025 blurs the lines between public policy and private profit. The opacity, erratic timing, and informal communication channels—particularly via presidential tweets—suggest that these were less about coherent trade strategies and more akin to orchestrated business maneuvers. The reactive movements of major indices, coupled with unusual options trading patterns and speculative capital flows, indicate that market elites likely capitalised on volatility, benefiting from privileged access or predictive positioning based on asymmetric information.
This raises serious concerns about market integrity and the ethical boundaries between governance and profiteering. When financial markets are left vulnerable to abrupt and opaque political actions, especially ones lacking institutional oversight, the door opens to manipulation, insider trading, and erosion of public trust.
In sum, the 2025 Trump tariff episode serves as a cautionary tale—one that highlights the dangers of politicising economic policy, the vulnerabilities of global markets to personalised decision-making, and the importance of upholding the foundational principles of fairness, transparency, and accountability in modern financial systems.
(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT University, Malabe. He is also the author of the “Doing Social Research and Publishing Results”, a Springer publication (Singapore), and “Samaja Gaveshakaya (in Sinhala). The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the institution he works for. He can be contacted at saliya.a@slit.lk and www.researcher.com)
Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India company gradually transformed into a colonial power.
By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, company officials began commissioning Indian artists – many formerly employed by the Mughals – to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling.
A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India’s largest exhibition of company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian artists.
Painted by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs.
“The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes,” says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show.
“Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice.”
Beyond natural history, India’s architectural heritage captivated European visitors.
Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local artists.
Beyond the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti’s tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi’s Qutub Minar and Humayun’s Tomb.
The once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them.
From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India’s first governor general much earlier.)
The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal).
While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal’s capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta’s (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed it.
Originally part of the Louisa Parlby Album – named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal – the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa’s return to Britain in 1801.
“The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century,” writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University.
“These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected.”
Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters.
At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above.
Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition.
By the late 18th Century, company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists.
Art historian Mildred Archer called them a “fascinating record of Indian social life,” blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective.
Regional styles added richness – Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions – nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers.
“They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience’s fascination with the ‘exoticism’ of Indian life,” says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG.
Most studies of company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727.
A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry – uniform in size and style – showing the kind of work French collectors sought by 1800.
One painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a chilingue.
Among the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank rowboats.
With no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore.
Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants – especially from private menageries.
As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings – just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species itself.
Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG says the the latest show proposes company paintings as the “starting point of Indian modernism”.
Anand says this “was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons”.
“The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation,” he says.
“Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art.”
[BBC]
Questions continue to be speculated about the true intentions of the JVP in orchestrating the NPP government – whether the JVP is still committed to its old Marxist-Leninist policies and whether it may or may not implement them through its NPP front. Further, will the JVP/NPP allow Sri Lanka’s multi-party democracy to continue or resort to one party governance like in countries where a Communist Party is in power. The fact that local government elections were held under an NPP government after a seven year hiatus is conveniently forgotten. That the LG elections had previously been postponed and cancelled by non-Marxist governments is now never mentioned.
And then the scaremongering – if the NPP government were to fail and suffer defeat at the next election, will it pave the way for the return of the Rajapaksas, yet again, but this time under a new generation led by the supposedly hugely talented Namal Rajapaksa? There were pre-election predictions that Namal Rajapaksa and the rump that is left of the SLPP might overtake Sajith Premadasa’s SJB in the LG elections. That did not happen.
The Rajapaksa scion is still safely in third place by quite a distance after the SJB and its lackluster leader, the slightly older but still the only young Premadasa in Sri Lankan politics. For company, they have a really old man, i.e., Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is capable of many things, but gracefully retiring is not one of them. At least, and to his credit, he lives in his own house and takes no residential perk at government expense unlike all the other ex-presidential freeloaders.
Philistine Preoccupations
It is not unfair to say that most of their commentaries are nothing but philistine preoccupations passing for serious politics. The word ‘philistine’ was a favourite term of Engels (the second fiddle to Marx’s first violin) and it is appropriate now since Marxism is at the tip of the tongue of everyone who wants to take a shot at the NPP government. The term is also apt to fling at the right wing populists, who are now becoming less popular in their western backyards thanks to their greatest specimen – Donald J. Trump
And what a specimen Trump is constantly devolving into – the latest stage being his disgusting White House encounter last Wednesday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Less said of it is better for your bile and if you saw it on television you would have instantly noticed the difference between a contemptible mammon out of Florida and a consummate statesman from Soweto.
As epithets are flung around to capture the antics of Trump, the latest comes from the usually measured Paul Krugman, distinguished American economist who was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for his work on “trade patterns and location of economic activity.” Krugman knows something about tariffs and economics, and the other day he called Trump and his sidekicks “sadistic zombies”.
Many among the Sri Lankan opposition politicians might be considered zombies, but none of them could be thought of as being sadistic. To close this loop on Trump and his dystopic global presence, one needs to acknowledge his primeval effectiveness in pushing people around to get his way. More so with foreign leaders than his opponents at home. But he uses this effectiveness to feed his ego and enrich his family and not at all to make a difference in the world’s trouble spots where the American government has more sway than anyone else.
This was quite evident on Trump’s recent visit to the Arab world that was all about glitter and one-way gifts including a flying palace, and nothing at all for American foreign policy, let alone for the wretched of the earth in Gaza or the slow burning of Ukraine. One noticeable fact of the visit was Trump’s deliberate snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Not only did Trump go to Riyad and Doha bypassing Jerusalem but he also sent a message to Netanyahu that he would deal directly with Netanyahu’s enemies including Hamas, Iran and the Houthis. To what great outcome, no one knows. At the same time, Trump’s apparent sidelining of Netanyahu together with the joint condemnation of Netanyahu’s latest Gaza plans by Britain, France and Canada, seemed to tighten the screws on Netanyahu and signaled a new opportunity for reining in Israel’s runaway leader and his notoriously right wing government.
All that came crashing down with the insane assassination, on Wednesday, of two young Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington by a lone gunman, 30 year old Chicago native Elias Rodriguez, shouting “Free, free, Palestine”. All that this politically deranged individual has achieved is to free Netanyahu to go ahead with his Gaza plans and to prolong the misery of the Palestinians who are under constant bombardment in Gaza.
Sri Lanka’s Durable Political System
Today’s Sri Lanka is fortunate to have finally come out of its own decades of political violence, and after several missed opportunities following the end of the war in 2009, the country finally has a government that for its all its inexperience in governing has shown consistent commitment to honesty, decency and transparency. Yet many commentators are rankled by the irony that a government whose political progenitor was a violent insurrectionist could now be a paragon of multi-party democracy.
Their constant allusion to Marxism is really a code for recalling the JVP’s violent past. Never mind that the past had come and gone 30 and 50 years ago. They conveniently ignore the possibility that the JVP could have and may actually have transformed itself from its pre-history to its current manifestation. Its current commitment to the parliamentary system and multi-party democracy is no less authentic than any of the other political parties. If at all, the JVP/NPP is more honest about it than every other party.
As well, those who agonize that the JVP might terminate Sri Lanka’s muti-party democracy and opt for some version of the political systems in countries such as Vietnam, China, Russia or even Cuba, fail to take into account the history and the currency of Sri Lanka’s political system that has proved to be quite durable, so much so that any political party that that tries to subvert or supplant it will do so at its own peril. And Sri Lanka’s political system, its history and currency are not comparable to what are prevalent in the four countries that I have mentioned.
The governing parties in these countries have been in power for as long as their polities have been existing, and they have no reason to think of changing their respective mode of government now or later. In contrast, the JVP/NPP government has come to power through the electoral process, and it has no incentive to think of changing that process now or later. Sri Lanka’s political system has not been without ailments, and the most debilitating of them has been the presidential system. And the JVP/NPP is the only political organization in the country that is fervently committed to curing Sri Lanka of that enervating illness. Whether it will keep its promise and succeed in changing the executive presidency is a different matter. It is the only party that is committed to changing the presidency, whereas all the others have tried to use it to serve their own ends.
Indian Comparisons
What is more comparable for Sri Lanka is the experience of the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal where the Indian Communists have won power through the electoral process on many occasions and acquitted themselves very well in government. In modern Kerala’s first state election in 1957, EMS Namboodiripad led the then undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) to electoral victory and a new government. That was India’s first elected Communist Government, and the world’s second – after the first elected Communist government (1945-1957) in San Marino, the tiny commune of a country in the Italian peninsula.
But the government was dismissed in 1959 by the Central Government at the insistence of a young Indira Gandhi using her influence as the President of the Congress Party, even sidelining her father and then Prime Minister Nehru. But Communists have become a governing force in Kerala forming several governments over the years led by the CPM (the Communist Party of India – Marxist), the larger of the two factions that emerged after the Party’s ideological split in 1964. The current government in Kerala is the government of the Left Democratic Front that is led by the CPM. The LDF has been in power since 2016 – winning two consecutive elections, a feat not achieved in 40 years.
In West Bengal, the CPM was in power continuously for 34 years from 1977 to 2011. Jyoti Basu of national prominence was Chief Minister from 1977 to 2000 and is recognized as the longest serving Chief Minister in India. In 1996, he was offered the chance to become India’s Prime Minister as head of a United Front alliance of non-Congress and non-BJP parties. But the great Bengali declined the offer in deference to his Party Polit Bureau’s lamebrained doctrinaire decision barring him from becoming Prime Minister in a coalition government. Unlike in Kerala, the CPM has not been able to alternate in government after its defeat in 2011. The Party was decimated in the 2021 national and State elections in West Bengal by Trinamool Congress a state-level party like Tamil Nadu’s DMK.
What the JVP/NPP has achieved in Sri Lanka is unique to Sri Lanka and, comparable to the Indian situations, the NPP’s electoral success poses no threat to the political system in Sri Lanka. The NPP government has completed only six months in office, but its critics are insistent on seeing results. They will not bother to look at what the present government’s predecessors respectively did in the first six months after elections in 2010, 2015 and 2019. At the same time, while is still too early for substantial results, it is getting late enough to get by without showing some work in progress, let alone some tangible achievements. It is about time.
by Rajan Philips
Book review
I was pleasantly surprised to receive recently, from Shashikala Premawardhane, Sri Lanka High Commissioner in Singapore at the time, a volume that commemorated half a century of diplomatic ties between the two countries. Entitled Singapore and Sri Lanka at 50: Perspectives from Sri Lanka, it had been published in 2023. The High Commissioner had handed over the editing of the book to two Sri Lankans and a Singaporean, who had chosen a range of topics to cover.
I was struck by the fact that I knew just four of the contributors, with a nodding acquaintance with two Foreign Service members who had contributed. I think this was because the work had been entrusted to younger writers and scholars, with particular interest in the fields they covered. So, it was just three of the economists, and reliable Prof Amal Jayawardane whom I knew, the latter from our time together on the Board of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.
It surprised me that we had only established diplomatic relations 50 years ago, but as the then Foreign Secretary put it, the relationship went back for well over a century before that, practically to the time when Singapore was established by Sir Stamford Raffles. The first section of the book records the many emigrants from here, who established themselves in business and professions, with several senior Singaporean politicians having Sri Lankan roots. There is much too about the Amarasuriya family which married into B.P. de Silva’s, who had set up the iconic B P de Silva jewellery firm, and also about doctors and lawyers.
I did however miss mention of the first Supreme Court judge from Sri Lanka, Justice Kulasekeram, who had worked for many years in Colombo and was then put on the Supreme Court when he migrated to Singapore by Chief Justice Sir Alan Rose. Rose, it may be remembered, had been Attorney General here and then Chief Justice, but was forced to leave by Sir John Kotelawala for his role in promoting Dudley Senanayake as Prime Minister when D S died suddenly.
But this section, on Historical and Social Relations, also has an incisive article by one of our brighter young diplomats, Madhuka Wickramaarachchi, about Singapore’s Language Policy, which has contributed so effectively to nation building whereas our selectivity has been so destructive of national unity. Without preaching, Madhuka makes clear how much we can learn, and that it is not too late to change our focus.
The second section, about Economic and Investment relations, begins with an article that is essentially about Prima. Following a long relationship with this country after it was established in Singapore in 1961, Prima was an early example of the Foreign Direct Investment the Jayewardene government encouraged from 1977. Having come in then, it has expanded over the years and now provides much employment in this country.
The next two chapters in this section are primarily about the new opportunities opened up by the relatively recent Sri Lanka Singapore Free Trade Agreement, and there is much detail about what has happened and what could happen, though I cannot comment on all this since it is not an area I know much about.
But I should note that I would have welcomed more attention to the work of a firm that came in nearly half a century back, the Overseas Realty Group which built the World Trade Centre, and then started work on Havelock City and persisted, despite the various problems this country faced. I believe they are a byword for integrity, which perhaps explains why this country has not taken more advantage of their predilection for investment here.
The third section, on Perspectives on Security and Counter Terrorism, is also something I know little about, though I found the account of the cooperation in this field of the two countries interesting, and also how information has been shared with regard to combating terrorism, with Singapore having links with other countries that enables it to be a helpful resource for less sophisticated countries like ours.
And the last chapter in this section highlights something we need to take seriously, the need for better coordination with regard to what is described as security architecture, and not only with regard to cyber security which is the focus of this piece. The sad story of what happened in 2018, before the Easter bombings, makes clear how destructive our failure to coordinate – and not only with regard to security – can be.
The next section of Diplomacy and Multilateralism lays out clearly the opportunities we missed when we might have joined ASEAN when it was set up. This was initially because of Dudley Senanayake’s worries about what seemed its pro-American tilt. Later, when Ranasinghe Premadasa was keen to renew dialogue, we were told to go away, but I suspect this was in part because J R Jayewardene and the foreign policy dispensation was not too keen on the sort of innovations Premadasa advocated.
Interestingly, after Amal Jayawardane’s piece on the need for closer cooperation with ASEAN, there is a fascinating article about cooperation during the pandemic, which suggests we could take this dimension further. The same goes for the area explored in the last section, on Environment and Climate Change. The first article there draws attention to the need to look at Climate Change in terms of a National Security Issue, and suggests areas of common concern to both our island states.
And fascinating was the last article in the book on Wetland Conservation, which draws attention to an area in which we can easily do more work, and cooperate with Singapore on productive initiatives. In this context I am saddened that a project which I am told Ruwan Wijewardene had supported when in the President’s Office to renew mangrove cover has now floundered, because no one in the Prime Minister’s Office, where the proposal now rests, has the energy or the will to take it further.
I don’t suppose anyone in the Prime Minister’s office has read this admirable book, but it is a pity that those in charge of policy are not encouraged to do so, both there and in the President’s office, and to look at the many ideas for future development that the book suggests.
Singapore and Sri Lanka at 50: Perspectives from Sri Lanka
an anthology reviewed by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
India’s colonial past revealed through 200 masterful paintings
Showers above 75 mm are likely at some places in Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces and in Galle, Matara, Nuwara-Eliya and Kandy districts.
Those who do not submit campaign finance returns by next Tuesday may lose political rights: Election Monitor
-
Business5 days agoDialog Enterprise strengthens data protection and cybersecurity with ISO/IEC 27017 and ISO/IEC 27018 certifications
-
Business6 days agoCargills Bank Q1 PAT rises to Rs. 162 million, up Rs. 116 million
-
Editorial4 days agoExpediency vs. Public duty
-
Midweek Review4 days agoJournalistic Brilliance Joins Humanity
-
Business4 days agoEthical AI and responsible leadership in emerging markets
-
Editorial5 days ago
Betrayal of the military
-
Features6 days agoDavid Attenborough and Sri Lanka – a tribute for celebration of 99 years on the planet!
-
Business19 hours agoPresident briefs Sri Lankan delegation leaving for tariff related discussions in Washington