Ring, Ring

Hello China

This is the US calling. Have you heard about what's going on in Burma?

You have? Then why aren't you doing anything? Rumor has it that if the Burmese, I mean Myanmar generals were going to listen to anyone, it would be you.

Oh, you don't want to cause problems with you exports. We understand. But you know who you export a lot of cheap crap to? Us, and we've been having problems with you sending us poisoned pet food, toothpaste and lead painted toys.

Yeah, so we were thinking of putting some massive tariffs in place to pay for all the safety inspections we're about to perform on all the goods you send here.

Oh I know that Walmart would be pissed if we did that, but right now our people are pretty pissed off about their dead pets and about dead monks in Burma- I think they'd be cool with the tariffs.

So you're gonna talk to the Burmese generals and your going to institute your own safety inspections. Nice. Yeah, I think you can do the inspections more cheaply there than here. That way you don't have to pay for shipping twice when we send contaminated crap back.

Let me know how it goes with the Burma call.

(And that is how diplomacy works- not that our president would know).