Discussion Class

Discussion Class Topics

- Friday the 18th of April-

(12pm)

- Japan's tourism plans -

The Japanese government announced it was looking into plans to increase the number of tourists to 60 million by 2030. For context, the total number of tourists for 2024 was about 35 million.

Can Japan bear the weight of nearly double the amount of tourists? Kyoto is already struggling with the number of tourists, and locals constantly complaining about buses and local places being crowded.

How can Japan ease the impact of this increase?

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- Friday the 18th of April -

(8pm)

- Trump tariffs the world -

Recently Trump has introduced a 10% tariff on all imports, and introduced higher tariffs for many other countries including Japan at 24%. There is major concern that this will crash the global economy. Trump calls this a reciprocal tariff, while it seems that many of the tariff amounts were chosen arbitrarily.

Why did Trump do this? Will this benefit America in the long run? Will this usher in a new worldwide depression or will these tariffs just become standard business? How will other countries react to these new tariffs?

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- Sunday the 13th of April -

(11am)

- Social media joins MAGA -

In January Mark Zuckerberg announced that he welcomed the new Trump administration and would follow current governmental trends by getting rid of fact-checking, moving the content moderation team to Texas, and updating community guidelines to allow disrespectful speech towards women and minorities. Now that Facebook, Instagram, and X have leaders aligned with Trump, there are not too many social media sites that position themselves as opposed or indifferent to the Trump administration.

Is this good or bad? Should social media sites be loyal to any specific candidate or party? What is the reason for the shift? Will these sites immediately flip their policies the next time a Democrat is in office?

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