In Europe once upon a time, every team of coal miners going underground carried a caged canary. If the canary died, they got out ASAP because it meant that there there were poisonous gases that could kill them.
S’pore is the world’s canary when it comes to trade. We suffer earlier than other countries or cities when there’s a global trade slowdown.
As the FT reports,
A trade canary sings — Singapore’s non-oil exports recorded their third consecutive double-digit fall in May, with electronics shipments falling 31.4 per cent (the largest decrease since late 2008) after a 16.3 per cent drop in April.
Marc Ostwald at ADM says the slide in electronics exports sends a “dire signal” as it represents “a generally very reliable proxy for the semiconductor and telecoms sectors worldwide”.
Oxford Economics note that their “coincident and leading global trade indicators are continuing to trend downwards, and the latter has fallen to its lowest level since 2009”.
“While this does not mean that a global recession is around the corner, it suggests that global growth will remain sluggish in the near term and that export-orientated economies will continue to struggle.”
Heng has to do better than talking about cock about natural aristocrats (PAP ministers) partnering us plebs to make S’pore a better place. His 4G team needs 65% of the popular vote: the pass mark for bragging rights that they have the people’s mandate.
What are the headwinds other than a lousy economy going into a GE
— Another reason why ground is not sweet for the PAP.
And there’s the promised 2 percentage points GST rise .coming possibly, when the economy’s in a recession. This when the PAP govt has huge budget surpluses.
But the PAP has a good vote bank because Why S’poreans continue voting for the PAP to have 2/3 of parly seats; PAP genius at work and Why grumbling about PAP govt, doesn’t mean S’poreans are disaffected and rooting for change.
Where the PAP votes are coming from
Why 37,000+ sure to vote for PAP (But balanced off by above 34,000+ retail investors in Hyflux who could lose 90% of their investments)
6,400 senior citizens each get $312.50 hongpao from a TLC
Why Milliennals will vote for the PAP
Merdeka Package shows how smart scholars are
Merdeka Generation: PAP cares for u, really they do
CPFLife: PAP govt cares for u, really they do
TOC’s “Correspondent” shows that PAP govt really cares for S’poreans
Vaping: PAP govt cares for u, really they do
Groceries: PAP cares for u, really they do
CPF interest rates: PAP govt cares for u, they really do
Oh I nearly forgot, civil servants especially the plebs are getting ang pows.
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 
No worries man! Most of the economic angst is man-made hence there is actually more risk to the upside, short of a prolonged major US-China killing war or a (short) nuclear war.
Mid-year ang pows are small change to civil servants for the past 10-15 years already. For those average & above, the bigger rewards are the Apr performance bonuses as well as the annual increments.