Irish Examiner view: Trump trading one distraction for another

President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese president Xi Jinping, right, shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday. Picture: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

The US president’s great game of distraction continues, with China’s leader Xi Jinping playing a supporting role in the latest episode.

This week, Trump framed a meeting with the Chinese leader as a triumph after China agreed to suspend new measures that threatened the supply line of critical rare earth metals — resources vital for global trade.

In return, he said he had agreed to halve the 20% import duty he had imposed on China.

While this is beneficial to the global economy, it should be pointed out that the escalation of tension, and the tit-for-tat trade blows between China and the US, are Trump’s responsibility in the first place.

It is difficult to take seriously someone claiming to have resolved a problem that he created in the first place.

The main consequence of Trump’s belligerence towards China appears to be a return to the relationship between the two countries before he took office for the second time.

However, the fact that he has blamed China for not preventing fentanyl, and the chemicals used to make that synthetic opioid, from entering the US suggests the two countries may find themselves at daggers drawn again in the near future.

That is a concern for another day, as Trump — true to form — dropped another bombshell the same day he met Xi Jinping when he announced the US is to resume nuclear weapons testing.

“Because of other countries testing programmes, I have instructed the department of war to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis,” he said. “That process will begin immediately.”

The temptation is to see this as the starting of an increasingly familiar approach to managing events. An announcement sparks an artificial furore, a further announcement rows back on that original declaration, and then that sequence of events can be presented as a hard-won diplomatic victory.

There will be plenty of nervousness given nuclear weapons testing is under discussion here, but nothing appears off-limits with the US president’s game of distraction.

Lack of planning is not reassuring

Householders across Ireland are sighing heavily as November 7 approaches.

That is the date by which local property tax (LPT) must be paid, and the Revenue Commissioners have been calling on property owners to value their properties by November 1 and to file an accompanying tax return by November 7.

This is a mammoth undertaking. Revenue stated earlier this week that it has already written to over 1.5m property owners to advise them to file their LPT valuation ahead of next Friday’s deadline. This means that approximately three quarters of householders have yet to file their LPT returns.

However, Revenue has also had to admit that its online portal was not working properly this week — with some users unable to file their returns.

The manager of Revenue’s LPT operations, Kate McClair, said on Wednesday that “the issues identified to date” had “now been resolved” after a system fix was deployed.

Ms McClair added: “We do, however, understand the concern individual taxpayers may experience if they have difficulties filing their return.

“Property owners can be assured that Revenue will continue to monitor functionality of our systems in the final days leading up to the filing deadline, as we do in the case of all significant return filing dates.” This illustrates one of the fundamental issues with the widespread migration of government services away from physical facilities to online interaction. The latter is supposedly a more efficient way to deal with large numbers of transactions, but technical problems such as Revenue’s this week can cause delays and complications.

While such problems can occur at any time, it seems strange that Revenue did not future-proof its systems given the huge numbers of taxpayers who were going to be using the online portal; the revelation that the system did not work properly will hardly deepen users’ faith in its efficiency.

This is without reckoning with the cohort of people who are either uncomfortable with or unwilling to engage with online services in the first place. Guaranteeing functionality for those who do engage online would be welcome at least.

Under a spell

Older readers may find themselves scratching their heads at the steady transformation of Halloween.

There was a time not so long ago when it consisted of a couple of hours at the end of October devoted to bobbing for apples in a basin of freezing water, or trying to avoid a strip of sodden cloth in a slice of barm brack.

Now it is a festival sprawled across several days, with children traipsing door to door trick-or-treating, while for adults, much of the enjoyment seems derived from finding a costume which reflects current trends.

Apologies if that sounds overly pompous. In reality, it means casting an eye over the headlines with a view to finding an opportunity for imitation.

The end of his term means we will have fewer Michael D Higgins outfits this year, presumably, but his replacement may prove difficult to emulate. It is hard to think of a signature Catherine Connolly style, for instance, though one can expect to see plenty of versions of Maria Steen’s famous blue handbag.

Far be it from this newspaper to pronounce on costume choices, but readers who are stuck for ideas today can always don a hi-vis jacket and pretend to be a Louvre jewel thief.

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