Myanmar, explained.
Thank you for your attention to this matter (Daniel Torok/Official White House Photo)
Myanmar’s military ruler celebrates receiving formal correspondence from Washington, seeing diplomatic validation despite sanctions.
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False recognition, tariffs, Myanmar, and the lost art of letter writingFalse recognition, tariffs, Myanmar, and the lost art of letter writing
On 7 July, US President Donald Trump sent letters to fourteen countries, most of them in Asia, informing them of the tariff rates that would apply to their exports to the United States.
Readers will know that these letters caused much comment and no little consternation among recipients. Flurries of activity were ignited in trade ministries throughout the world, much of it concerned with what response might placate the President enough to bring down the rates he was prescribing.
One of the countries that received such a letter was Myanmar. A country of near-zero economic importance for the United States, it nevertheless runs a proportionately large trade surplus with the United States, driven by the melancholy fact that Myanmar’s poverty means that its imports fall well short of the simple textile and agricultural goods it sends the other way.
Myanmar was hit with a 40% tariff in Trump’s letter, the highest handed out.
Did this letter perturb Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Chairman of the State Administration Council, that took power in Myanmar via a coup in February 2021?
Not a bit of it.
For sure, in his own letter of reply to Trump, Min Aung Hlaing meekly proposed that, as a “Least Developed Country”, Myanmar deserved some leniency. But this Uriah Heep moment could not disguise Min Aung Hlaing’s joy at getting Trump’s letter at all, nor surely his utter elation that it opened with the salutation, “His Excellency…”
And thus we come to the source of Min Aung Hlaing’s jubilation.
Simply, Min Aung Hlaing’s rule in Myanmar is not recognised by the United States nor, indeed, any other country that takes human rights even a little seriously. Shunned, sanctioned, the perennial pariah even in ASEAN, Min Aung Hlaing is not a man who habitually gets mail adorned with the diplomatic niceties. And especially not from the erstwhile leader of the free world.
Shunned, sanctioned, the perennial pariah even in ASEAN, Min Aung Hlaing is not a man who habitually gets mail adorned with the diplomatic niceties (AFP/Getty Images)
Min Aung Hlaing did not waste many words in his letter back to Trump on the tariff issue. Across three obsequious pages instead he sought to draw parallels – nay, suggest kinship – with his efforts to delegitimise Myanmar’s elections of 2020 (that had resulted in a resounding victory for Myanmar’s National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi), with Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden the same year. Of course, Min Aung Hlaing’s response to the democratic message was to stage a coup – or, as he explained to Trump, to “temporarily assume the State’s responsibilities”. In Myanmar temporary has come to mean four years, six months and counting. It’s also come to mean thousands of protestors killed, thousands more imprisoned, a destroyed economy, a country overwhelmed in conflict and despair.
The whole episode does not make for clarity in foreign policy.
But adding icing to the confection of his literary cake, Myanmar’s dictator also took the opportunity to congratulate Trump on his effective closure of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, purveyors of the truth in Myanmar, and decidedly unwelcome.
As architect of Myanmar’s descent, Min Aung Hlaing’s letter might reasonably be judged as a farrago of flattery, lies, bad faith … and no little cunning. It will not work in getting him the formal recognition he craves, but the whole episode does not make for clarity in foreign policy.
The art of letter writing is no doubt in precipitous decline, but it remains important to get the basics right, lest inappropriately applied conventions of the medium become the message itself.
About the author
Sean Turnell
Sean Turnell is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. He was previously a Senior Fellow in the Southeast Asia Program, specialising in macroeconomic policy, economic reform, and Myanmar. From 2016 to 2021, he served as senior economic adviser to Myanmar's democratic government, and was subsequently imprisoned for 650 days following the February 2021 military coup.
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