Who can be sure how correct the conclusions are that we've arrived at regarding the impact on our economy of the decisions being taken in the US by the Trump administration? Up to now, we have continued to believe that as Malta exports relatively limited volumes of merchandise to the US, the Trump measures will affect us only marginally.

Technically, we have been placed under the same trade axe as the other EU member states but in reality there's very little it can fall on. That's the logic of how we made and are still making our calculations.

However measures that the US is taking in practically all international sectors are so radical in scope - even by their being announced, whether they're implemented or not is immaterial - that they necessarily serve to destabilise the considerations by which states arrive at their decisions. Pessimists will tell you that this always happens on the eve of some great war.

What is certain in all this is that as a result, secondary impacts will follow in the fields of security, investments and trade. What these will be, sector by sector, nobody can really predict. The probability is not slim that in some sector or other, the impact on Malta will not be as minimal as we have been assuming.

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Traffic

One doesn't have to be a genius to acknowledge that the more cars and motorcycles there are on the road, the greater will be the probability of traffic accidents. In such a small space as the one in which we live, this increase also means an increasingly concentrated overcrowding of vehicles. Impatience when driving triggers more accidents which also become more serious.

Another factor to keep in mind is that the steep rise in motor cycles in circulation inevitably contributes to more accidents. In the belief that motor cycles can help to dilute traffic, some people might dispute such a claim. They regard as a desirable development the fact that recently sales of motor cycles have begun to exceed in number sales of passenger cars.

This might be a good point from the perspective of traffic congestion. I doubt though whether the same applies in the context of attempts to curtail traffic accidents, which in turn actually create further congestion.

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Anti-semitism

The cry that some statement or other, or that some organization, country or international association are anti-semitic has by now surely been taken too far. The strategy was always in place by which any criticism addressed at Israel is stamped upon as anti-semitic. Frequently the strategy succeeded, even when it was incorrect. But today it has been taken so far that it has lost most of its sting.

There can no longer be any doubt that in the way by which the Netanyahu government has continued to wage war in Gaza, the aim has become that of decimating the population that lives there by hunger and the terror of bombing. In this, Natanyahu is succeeding. But to condemn the strategy that he and his government are implementing as immoral, as flagrantly in breach of international law and as genocidal is in no way an anti-semitic statement. It's the truth. When having to face it, a number of young people in Israel's army who cannot stand it or continue to live it, have committed suicide.