The rebound and recovery strategy of the Duterte administration is a cut and paste from the Republican Party playbook, from Reagan to Trump. The underlying principle is to empower the big, as in Big Business. It is supposed to work like this: when Big Business is empowered with tax cuts and other stability-building measures, the sheer effort to invest and increase productive activities — the natural consequence of that propping up — will have a trickle-down effect, pulling up and lifting up everybody. A rising tide lifts all boats, from the yachts of the masters of the universe to the rickety bancas of the poor.

Arthur Laffer, a conservative economist, reportedly drew a scatterplot of trickle-down on a napkin that mightily impressed the Reagan economic crowd. From then on, it became the unquestioned and infallible strategy on economic growths and turnarounds of the Republican Party.