A message reached Helvidius Priscus at home before the session, telling him the emperor would rather he stayed away from the Senate that morning. He went in. Epictetus taught the exchange to his students in Vespasian’s own words, which is why we still have it.
“Go in then, but say nothing.” Helvidius answered that he would keep silent if he were not asked, and that if he were asked he would say what he thought right.
Vespasian told him he would be put to death for it, and Helvidius asked when he had ever claimed to be immortal.
Andreia is the virtue that names what he did, and it is the least sentimental of the four. Courage here is narrower than dying well. It is saying the sentence while the person who can end you is still in the room.
Your version of the room arrived in July, in two pieces, three days apart.
At 12.01am Eastern on 24 July, a 12.5 percent US duty took effect on roughly a third of Singapore’s domestic exports.1 On the 27th, MAS steepened the rate of appreciation of the dollar band for the second time this year, a smaller move than April’s, against second-quarter growth of 5.7 percent.
Both landed on the same invoice, and neither of them asked you.
The tariff raises what your American buyer pays at the border. The stronger Singapore dollar shrinks what each of those US dollars becomes by the time it reaches your account. Twelve of the sixteen economists in the Reuters poll expected MAS to sit still, so you have no cause to feel slow for having planned around a hold.
So you can absorb it. Nobody has to be told, the relationship stays warm, and the loss moves into your own gross margin a month at a time until the year closes on a number you cannot explain to your board.
Absorbing it is the only version of this decision you never have to say out loud, which is exactly why it is the popular one.
Absorbing it is the only version of this decision you never have to say out loud, which is exactly why it is the popular one.
The courageous move is smaller and worse-feeling than it sounds. You call the buyer this week, name the new price, name both causes by their dates, and let them react while you are still on the line. Then ask for the order at the new number instead of apologising for it.
If they want time, give them a dated window rather than an open one, because an open one is absorbing it with extra steps.
Their alternatives moved too.
Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia drew 10 percent; Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines drew 12.5. A buyer who walks is walking into a dearer world, not a cheaper one.
One caution belongs here, because courage is easy to counterfeit. Raising a price because you are frightened of the second half is panic in andreia’s coat. If you would hold this price through a calm quarter, hold it; if the only thing keeping it is your reluctance to make the call, then the call is the entire job.
Helvidius had no invoice. He had your problem.
The price you refuse to say out loud is the one you have agreed to pay.
The price you refuse to say out loud is the one you have agreed to pay.
Footnotes
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The exemptions are wide enough to matter: energy, pharmaceuticals, some electronics, aerospace, semiconductors, and the metals used in currency and bullion. A good share of Singapore’s exporters read the announcement and owed nobody a phone call, which is its own kind of luck to be told about at a dinner. ↩