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Robyn Alice McCutcheon, who lives north of Bangor, is a retired Foreign Service Officer who served in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Romania.
Here we go with Liberation Day and the world of Trump tariffs! The White House apparently sees no big deal for coddled Americans who no doubt could make do with less.
This seems like a good time to learn from the recent experience of another country most people likely have not thought about. After all, we Americans are amateurs when it comes to tariffs.
I give you Uzbekistan, a country whose citizens are professionals at this. Uzbeks owe their professional tariff survival skills to President Islam Karimov. A former Communist Party secretary who became president after the Soviet collapse, Karimov espoused a policy of Make Uzbekistan Great Again. Within a few years most ethnic Russians who could get out did get out as Karimov allowed nationalist passions to ignite. Uzbekistan was now for the Uzbeks.
Down came the statues of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, and up went statues of Amir Timur, better known in the West as Tamerlane, the new symbol for Uzbek statehood. Terrorist bombings by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 1999 led to a total crackdown on dissent of any type. Even benches were removed from parks so that people would not linger and, horror, talk about life with friends and neighbors.
Karimov introduced trade barriers that effectively cut Uzbekistan off from the rest of the world. No McDonalds or Burger Kings here. The policy was import substitution to encourage Uzbek business and industry. Sound familiar? Uzbekistan even withdrew from the unified Central Asia electric grid to keep all electricity generated within its borders, well, within its borders.
The economic picture for Uzbekistan was nothing but rosy, at least according to official Uzbek government figures. Any source contradicting those figures was news of the most fake variety. The GDP grew at a slow but steady pace, and the world financial crisis of 2009 scarcely touched Uzbekistan. Karimov’s book on the global financial-economic crisis, called on the rest of the world to follow the Uzbek example to achieve abundant peace and prosperity. It was pointless to tell Uzbek officials that of course the Uzbek economy had not collapsed. How could it when it had never risen off its knees in the first place?
The White House could learn much from the Uzbek example that would allow it to pursue its agenda more effectively, but U.S. citizens also have much to learn from their Uzbek friends. It was normal for government workers in Uzbekistan not to receive salaries for months on end. When salaries were paid, it was often in kind. I have Uzbek friends whose balcony was knee-deep in potatoes, their salary in lieu of cash for a month.
When Russia put high tariffs on auto imports from Uzbekistan, the traffic in Tashkent exploded as government workers were given the chance to soak up the overproduction at next to no cost. (The Chevrolet Matiz, assembled at a facility in the Fergana Valley, sold for only about $5,000 in 2009.)
When the government began paying salaries electronically, employees became used to banks telling them there was no cash on hand when they went to make withdrawals. When pensioners started receiving their pensions on debit cards, they would stand at registers in high-end stores frequented by foreigners and ask that they be allowed to pay with their debit cards in exchange for cash they could use at the food markets.
Somehow or other, Uzbeks lived on and even thrived after a fashion. Barter was the name of the game. “How many kilos of potatoes are needed to buy that Chevy Matiz?” The old Soviet model, “You pretend to pay me, and we pretend to work,” continued to apply. Life happened on the side in spite of a government that was, in effect, closed to the outside world for more than 25 years until death came for president-for-life Karimov in 2016.
So take heart, citizens of America! Ask your representatives to work out a deal with American farmers who have lost their market in China. Just think what you could do with a front porch knee-deep in soy!
Offer your services to higher-income neighbors. You can reduce their weekly food expenses in exchange for a percentage in cold hard cash. One day you may be able to buy a car from Detroit that no longer has a market outside U.S. borders. A month’s salary in American whiskey that is no longer competitive in Europe may ease your pain.
Through it all, ponder that you are helping to level the playing field for the world economy through your understanding of the Uzbek experience. One day, perhaps, we may cast off our chains as we realize there is more uniting than dividing us. In the meantime, “Xo’p mayli.” That’s Uzbek for good or, sometimes and perhaps more to the point in this context, whatever.
