The United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade tells me that in 2024, Australia imported goods from the United States to the value of US$34.72 billion. This includes big expense things like machinery, electronic items and vehicles, right down to the small stuff like whips, essential oils and silk apparel. And we are just considering a trade relationship between two friendly countries. (I won’t venture into the various definitions, or interpretations of the word friendly).

What a spread, a veritable smorgasbord of traded items globalisation has created. An interdependency, which is both a source of strength and comfort and safety, and yet simultaneously a weakness and an Achilles heel. The yin and yang of human relationships…

Many years ago, in fact the middle years of last century, I was a student, one of less than 130 at the East Devonport primary school. We walked to school then (no front gate delivery in a giant SUV) and carried a small amount of gear in a little leather backpack secured with straps.

But I digress. There was a transient period when, for some unrecalled reason, I was being bullied by one of my peers, and the advice from my mother was ‘just biff him on the nose’.

The thought of such an altercation both enthralled and terrified me – I chose a non-confrontational option. But my mother’s words of strength have subsequently remained with me.

Meanwhile, my brother and I were regular attendees at the local St Paul’s Church of England Sunday school classes, taking a penny or maybe thruppence, for the collection plate. I still have a small bible, dated from 1958, for ‘good attendance’, but the font is minute and now unreadable, even with a bright light and clean spectacles. Our kind and gentle teacher, whom I remember well, held an alternative view to my mother, and taught us the lessons of humbleness and humility and forgiveness and ‘turning the other cheek’.

When my primary school days finished, I moved to a harsh and cruel boy’s boarding school in Launceston, with an ethos apparently trapped in Victorian times, both academically, socially and spiritually. The fact that it touted itself as a Church of England school was ironic, as the security and safety of such institutions has been blown out of the water recently with numerous investigations into abuses of various forms. My experiences were no different to those exposed by those reviews.

And here I learned another form of survival – ‘he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day’. My repertoire was growing, with more arrows of sustenance residing in the quiver.

This morning I listened with admiration to the ABC FM ‘Hard Talk’ radio interview, where Christine Lagarde was being quizzed about her perceptions of, and reactions to, the current chaotic and unpredictable utterances from President Trump. I have followed her for many years, and felt comforted by her firm and authoritative opinions, and today was no exception.

In my mind, I imagine her and the Donald together in the same venue, debating some of the currently contested global issues, arbitrated by a no bullshit moderator.

The thought of the Donald, using his usual initial tactics of intimidation and demonisation, and then retreating to bluster and bullshit, with Christine Lagarde, rebuffing his simplistic arguments, quietly thrills me.

Daydreams are not just entertaining and cheap but can also give us vision and fortitude.

So, what should Australia, and more specifically, our elected leaders do now?

Trade sanctions have been announced against our aluminium and steel exports to the US. Then there is all that stuff we bring in from the United States. A seven-ring circus of varied imports. Should we take a firm view as Christine Lagarde says, and just biff Donald on the nose, as my mother advised, and impose some trade sanctions?

How will our tradies react if their huge 4WD Rams suddenly cost another 20K? Will the bourbon-drinkers now find that a single malt is a more palatable choice, and will our defence department colleagues rise-up, if our relationship with Pine Gap is questioned? What about our outlaw motorcycle folk, who may find the cost of a Harley has escalated significantly? Food for thought, eh?

Mrs Callahan, my Sunday School teacher, would probably seek some common ground, to find that middle of the road position where there are no losers, and we can all live in harmony. This is a wonderful aspiration, where ‘the lion and the lamb’ can coexist. Turning the other cheek doesn’t imply giving in, or giving up, or conceding defeat.

But it requires fortitude, strength and persistence, as well as some give and take. It requires stepping aside from the initial, emotionally-driven need to react impulsively, sometimes tainted with subsequent regret.

All these decisions need to be tempered by the fact that we live in a world which is a closed system, with finite natural resources (solar energy being an exception). The low-hanging fruit has been picked, and our consumption-driven western lifestyle has driven us to a position where we have limited the available wriggle room.

The oft-heard political mantra of ‘growth and development and jobs’ needs to be reconsidered, and revised and readjusted. We have a crisis of a human population exceeding the available resource base required to meet the status quo and sustain our current Western lifestyle needs.

And this shemozzle we find ourselves in, not unexpectedly either, is compounded by the global climate emergency, with the associated and compounding tipping points of rising sea levels, melting ice reserves, escalating temperatures and changing atmospheric and oceanic currents.

So, he who fights and then runs, will soon realise there is nowhere to run to. A harsh lesson, to be taken on board, from those private school days…

Scott Bell is a fifth generation Tasmanian, with two daughters and four grandchildren. In a previous life he was a general practitioner. Now he spends most of his time living on a covenanted conservation property in NE Tasmania, working as an owner builder, monitoring and recording the resident wildlife, and caring for the remaining flora and fauna. He has an extensive police record with multiple court appearances, fines and convictions as a result of his NVDA climate activism. He enjoys his life, and living.