India believes that the RCEP trade deal doesn't provide adequate protection against possible surges of imported goods. In particular, India is concerned about cheap Chinese goods flooding the domestic market.The Indian Express
The barely disguised secret is that India’s economy, as the historical record shows, is inherently protectionist. There’s no way a possible removal of agricultural tariffs protecting farmers would not provoke a social cataclysm....The Vineyard of the Saker
As energy or trade corridors, the fact is both Chennai-Vladivostok and Belt and Road spell out Eurasia integration. India in this particular case will profit from Russian resources traveling all the way from the Arctic and the Russian Far East, while Russia will profit from more Indian energy companies investing in the Russian Far East.
The fine-print details of the Russia-China “comprehensive strategic partnership” as well as Russia’s push for Greater Eurasia were also discussed at length in Vladivostok. A crucial factor is that as well as China, Russia and India have made sure their trade and economic relationship with Iran – a key node of the ongoing, complex Eurasian integration project – remains.Poking Uncle Sam in the eye. How will he react?
Most of all, Russia and India reaffirmed an essential commitment since BRICS was set up over a decade ago. They will continue to “promote a system of mutual transactions in national currencies,” bypassing the US dollar.
One can easily imagine how this will go down among Washington sectors bent on luring India into the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which is a de facto China containment mechanism.Asia Times
India is a country of contrasts. It is home to a $160 billion tech services industry, while also buffeted by environmental and social challenges - and this makes it fertile ground for globally scalable, tech-driven solutions....World Economic Forum
If international diplomacy indulges in symbolism, this must be one of the most poignant ones in world politics in the recent times. The RIC has always been a red rag for the US — ever since the great Soviet strategic thinker and Kremlin statesman Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov first proposed the tantalising idea in 1999. The profound symbolism cannot be lost on Trump that India is consorting with the two “revisionist powers” on the planet (Russia and China) which, according to the US, are each working its way toward making a power grab on the world stage....
NEW DELHI: India has identified 151 products that it can export to China instead of the US and benefit from the price advantage thrown up by the retaliatory higher duties slapped by the Xi Jinping government on US products amid the intensifying trade war between the two countries.
These include diesel engines, X-ray tubes, antibiotics, copper ores, granite, xylene, inverter and ketones, said people with knowledge of the matter....
China hopes to win Indian and Russian support in establishing a “new type” of “rules-based” and “multilateral” trade initiative.Checkpoint Asia
Multiple Indian media reports suggest the country’s recently re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join forces with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kyrgyzstan this week to express their concerns about US President Donald Trump’s protectionist approach....
When India applied for SCO membership or when observers like myself felt elated when India was finally admitted into the grouping in 2017, no one could have foreseen that the grouping held such potential in the very near term itself as a platform for the reset of regional politics — in particular, the India-Pakistan-China triangle.
New possibilities are opening up for Indian diplomacy at the two-day summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at Bishkek on June 13-14....India Punchline
Under the decades-old program - known as the Generalized System of Preferences - Indian companies were able to avoid some $5.7 billion in duties back in 2017.Zero Hedge
The new standards will take effect June 5."I have determined that India has not assured the United States that India will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets," Trump said in a proclamation on Friday evening. "Accordingly, it is appropriate to terminate India’s designation as a beneficiary developing country effective June 5, 2019."The decision isn't unexpected: The White House warned back in March that it could end India's preferential treatment if India didn't agree to certain reforms, but it decided to hold off so as to not hurt Modi politically during the run up to the election. According to Bloomberg, Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has become increasingly frustrated with India’s trade barriers and practices. The trade rep has taken issue with the country’s self-designation as a developing nation at the World Trade Organization....
The national elections in India have brought victory to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The NDA has won a stable majority in the lower house of parliament. This means that the right-wing coalition will remain in power for at least another five years, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be able to continue his economic and social reforms, as well as be able to operate with a free hand in the international arena.
This is equivalent to anti-trust in a platform economy. On the other hand, economic liberals will charge that it is government interference in free markets and free trade.This is key in a platform economy, which is now one of the key factors in building out the Digital Age. The obvious danger is increase of market concentration and therefore of monopoly and monopsony power as owners of digital platforms control their markets and supply chains.
India’s not exactly breaking new ground here with it restriction. As antitrust expert Lina Khan noted in a February tweet: “[T]his sort of structural separation has been a key principle in US competition policy. For example, Congress in 1906 passed a law prohibiting railroads from transporting goods they owned.”
Khan continued:
We applied a similar rule to TV networks, telecom carriers, banks. There’s good reason to debate whether structural separations should apply to digital monopolies. But framing the rule as highly invasive or exotic misunderstands our own history (& success) applying it.Khan’s the author of an influential paper in the Yale Law Journal on Amazon, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, and has a paper forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review on structural separations, The Separation of Platforms and Commerce.…
Eminent Indian economist Professor Utsa Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University) has estimated that Britain robbed India of $45 trillion between 1765 and 1938, However it is estimated that if India had remained free with 24% of world GDP as in 1700 then its cumulative GDP would have been $232 trillion greater (1700-2003) and $44 trillion greater (1700-1950). Deprivation kills and it is estimated that 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from egregious deprivation under the British (1757-1947). The deadly impact of British occupation of India lingers today 71 years after Independence, with 4 million people dying avoidably from deprivation each year in capitalist India as compared to zero (0) in China....To say nothing of many other colonies of the Empire, or the submission of China.
Fear of defeat drives military men to folly. Early in 1968, General William Westmoreland, America’s commanding general in Vietnam, feared that communist forces might overrun U.S. military positions at Khe Sanh. His response, according to recently declassified cables as reported in the New York Times today, was to seek authorization to move nuclear weapons into Vietnam. He planned to use tactical nuclear weapons against concentrations of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops. President Lyndon Johnson cancelled Westmoreland’s plans and ordered that discussions about using nuclear weapons be kept secret (i.e. hidden from the American people), which for the last fifty years they have been.
Westmoreland and the U.S. military/government had already been lying to the American people about progress in the war. Khe Sanh as well as the Tet Offensive of 1968 were illustrations that there was no light in sight at the end of the tunnel — no victory loomed by force of arms. Thus the call for nuclear weapons to be deployed to Vietnam, a call that President Johnson wisely refused to countenance....Recall that five-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur, winner of the war in Pacfic and one of the most popular people in the US at the time wanted to use nuclear weapons against China after they entered the Korean War. Truman fired him. MacArthur returned to a ticker tape in Manhattan and became chairman of the board of Remington Rand and later of the Sperry Rand.
While the West is divided, with the US and the EU arguing with each other and suffering from internal crises, China and India are becoming world powers. What does it mean globally and locally? Should we expect any Asian country or Asia as a whole to become a new powerhouse? How to preserve security in the region and what Russia’s role in that could be?
The world’s balance of power is slowly, but steadily moving towards Asia. While some countries like South Korea and Japan still depend on their Western allies, others, like China and India, are becoming independent players rivaling with the US. But the nature of these powers is different, Kim Jin-hyun, Chairman of the World Peace Forum, told valdaiclub.com on the margins of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok....Valdai Club
