PH benefits $44,603B (P2.2 Trillion) from U.S yearly. Can China replace it?

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Don’t you know that for this year the economic and military aids the United States will give to the Philippines will be U.S $180 million according to US state department’s spokesperson John Kirby?

The United States is our third biggest trading partner where in year 2015 we had a total trade of $16.491 billion. $9.023 billion was export composed mostly of electronic products while we imported $7.468 billion from the Yanks.

America, based on that year, was our third global trading partner after China and Japan where the land of samurais and ninjas was our biggest trade partner. Our total trade with China was $17.646 billion while our trade with Japan was $18.669 billion.

Hmm, the difference of the total trade with  the Chinks and the Yanks was more than a billion of dollars?

Singa-four, whose neighbors are Singa-five and Singa-three, ranked as the fourth largest trading partner of the country for 2015 with a total trade amounting only to $8.806 billion or a share of 6.8 percent of total trade we have with countries around the globe.

Minuscule, compared to China and Japan.

Although both of these countries have more total trade with us, the economic benefits from both were dwarfed if we quantify our economic relationship with the U.S through the Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) where we are number one in this trade in the world, and remittances the Filipinos in the U.S sent yearly in our country.

Here are my questions in case we totally break diplomatic, economic, and military (like revocation of EDCA or Mutual Defense Treaty) ties with Uncle Sam:

Can our 1.2 million IT-BPO workers hold their jobs here when the U.S government ordered the primarily U.S companies in the IT-BPO to withdraw from the Philippines and look for other countries just like what she did to U.S corporations to countries that she broke diplomatic relations?

The IT-BPO would be providing $25 billion revenues for direct and indirect jobs for us this year. That would be at par with the remittances our overseas contract workers would be sending this year to our country.

Can China and Russia replaced the $10.4 billion sent last year and more of this amount this year  by our U.S Filipino expatriates in case America cut ties with us and put a stop of these monies being sent here?
Can the Sinos and Ivans substitute the jobs created here by the $9,023 export of goods we have with the U.S?

Gee whiz, those posers were dilemmas just like the problems face by matron killer Ronnie Dayang and Senator Leila Delima!

Imagine, $180 million economic and military aids plus $9,023 billion export receipts to the U.S plus $25 billion IT-BPO revenues plus $10.4 billion remittances from our expats in the Land of the Brave and Home of the Free, anak ng bibingka, that would be 2.2 trillion Philippine pesos that we are going to lose if worse comes to worst with Uncle Sam.

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But in case President Rodrigo Duterte, who called U.S President Barrack Obama “mother of whore” dismissed him by saying “go to hell” and “muttered to him “God Damn it” last Friday’s speaking engagement, plays only brinkmanship by raising the Chinese and Russian bogeys, would the U.S hike the economic and military assistance, and quotas for the importation of our goods because he scares them off of his plan to add China and Russia us our allies?

American military search-and-rescue helicopters, surveillance planes and Marines streamed
 toward the central Philippines  during the devastation of Typhoon Yolanda in the  Visaya Region

Remember that when he raised last election campaign that he would borrow billions of dollars from China to construct a national railway system that will connect Mindanao to the rest of the country, the jittery Japanese hurriedly pledged to the Philippines $2.4 billion and declared that they would themselves build the railway in Luzon to connect Manila to Bulacan to ease the monstrous traffic that exact the economy tens if not hundreds of millions of pesos daily of economic oppurtunities.

 The Nippon-koku also committed another tranche of billions of U.S dollars for another railway in Mindanao.

I wrote in ”Duterte’s political jujitsubetween China and Japan” the reasons for the instant generosity of Japan was because the latter fears the Flips  falls into an alliance with the Chinks and threaten to sandwich the tankers and cargo ships of the Banzai Country as they pass on the $5 trillion a year trade lanes called South China Sea.

Aside from that railway system’s long term loan, the Land of the Rising Sun had pledged too to give us 10 big Coast Guard’s ships where two sturdy vessels would be released anytime from now.

“It promised to lease five of her United States made Beechcraft King’s TC-90s as donation need a new law at the same time could provoke China who has a fragile relationship with Japan on the disputed islets. The five military aircraft to the Philippines would be used by the latter to patrol territories it claims in the disputed South China Sea,” I wrote.

Last year, when then President Benigno Aquino III visited the former Axis Power Country he submitted a wish list enumerating what equipment the Philippines need urgently to boost its maritime security in the South China Sea like the four big turbo prop engines’ P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft (86 of them with their navy), Shirane class destroyers, Hayabusa class missile patrol boats, and Oyashio-class submarines.

“We should start from the easy part first and then when those organization and human aspects are met, I think we are ready to transfer the P-3C,” said Dr. Ken Jimbo, assistant professor at Keio University’s Faculty of Policy Management, whose specialization includes international security, security in Asia-Pacific, US defense policy and regionalization in East Asia.
As bellicosity of China spikes against Japan and the U.S, I suspected that the Banzai Country would lease or donate to us a squadron of manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries F-4 Phantom II multiple role jets, where the Japan Air Defense Force has 71 EF/RF-4EJ variants and Mitsubishi made F-2A multi-role (based on a Lockheed Martin F-16 variant) where it has 64 on its hangar and plan to replace them with the 5th Generation 42 stealth and multi-role F-35 Lightning II it ordered from the United States.

Since I discussed lengthily and boringly, what with those economic figures and alphabetical soup and numerical combinations of those jets, this brouhaha of shifting our alliances with the U.S to China and Russia, now my poser: Is Duterte really playing the bluffing game here?

I pray to God he was.

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)