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Into whose arms precisely? India into China's? Not likely! This is what the US government is counting on - they only need to be a better alternative than China.

Into whose arms precisely? India into China's? Not likely! This is what the US government is counting on - they only need to be a better alternative than China. The US has a lot of power, that only China comes close to matching. The dominance of the US in certain fields (like IT hardware, software and services, payment services) makes most countries dependent on the US. > The great brands are going to go more and more offshore, like Apple or Google already does. Offshore what? Manufacturing? US tariffs do not affect offshoring to sell to other countries, but the US is a huge market for all those brands.

bamboozled 1y ago
With all due respect, can you outline why the current version of America is actually better than China? I mean China has major issues but I'm starting to lose sight of what makes the USA a better more trustworthy ally who protects freedom and democracy? I'm not saying "it's over" but there are a lot of troubling signs it's going in the wrong direction fast. In the case of India and China, I think it's more of a case of India becoming more independent, which is "good" on the one hand ,but probably terrible for American hegemony and they will just side more with Russia and continue to buy resources from them. I'm not sure if Americans can really grasp how their soft power around the world is vaporizing by the day. Even at it's peak, probably Obama era, I wouldn't say America was default popular, now, I don't know what to say but it's really looking as if people are just deciding to move on from the American experiment as we realize it might not be coming back. Look at places like Switzerland cancelling orders of F35s, just a coincidence ? I guess smaller countries aren't being left with much choice, that's the fundamental issue. Edit: I'm not worried about the down votes, but I also think it's sad and maybe even a sign that people have sore feelings about reality?
- safety1st 1y ago
  I appreciate that you asked the question and actually want to learn about foreign affairs between two non Western countries! So to just scratch the surface, China and India had a full blown war in the 1960s and have had armed conflict on their shared border many times, most recently in 2021. Meanwhile China actually INVADED Vietnam in 1979, four years after the US-Vietnam War ended! Both of these countries view China as an immediate potential military threat because it is one, they have fought actual wars with it. It's so wild how there are all these Western liberals who think Trump is somehow worse than this, I don't even like the guy but these people obviously don't know shit about the history of the region. The history is China warring with these countries!
  - lenkite 1y ago
    Do note that the 2020-21 conflict was not a "truly armed" conflict per-se. Unless you count biological, human arms with the occasional use of sticks. Most of it involved muscle power and no firearms. I personally find it remarkable that two large nations can have a border conflict without a single gunshot fired.
    - safety1st 1y ago
      What? Per independent sources shots were fired and dozens were killed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%93India_skirmishes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%8...
      - lenkite 1y ago
        Warning shots into the air are fine. There are border agreements not to use firearms directly against soldiers. This was religiously followed by both sides - no one died because of gunshots.
      - porridgeraisin 1y ago
        The actual battle was hand+sticks "guerilla". All shots were warning shots and did not occur as part of the actual guerilla fight. The shots happened at multiple places in different times.
        safety1st 1y ago
        Shots were fired along the LAC for the first time in 45 years and according to independent sources dozens were killed. So what if they weren't killed by the bullets? What is with this weird downplaying of the conflict? India/China tensions are high and they recently killed each other on their border!
        kelipso 1y ago
        Modi just visited China earlier this month, last visit was 2019, so India-China relations are better now and tensions aren't that high anymore.
lm28469 1y ago
100 years ago the British Empire ruled the world, today it's a small island nobody care about. People underestimate how fast things can move
- arethuza 1y ago
  The GDP of the USA overtook that of the British Empire in 1916 (which is actually a lot later than I was expecting): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_British_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_British_Empire
  - bamboozled 1y ago
    Do you think the GDP of the USA will keep growing / maintain if it isolates itself further?
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Yes. The US economy is not particularly dependent on international trade. If it were, Trump's silly tariffs would have been stopped by now.
      - bamboozled 1y ago
        You seem to be contradicting yourself. One of the key goals of the tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to the US. Yet you're saying the US doesn't rely on trade, which one is it? Manufacturing is offshored so you need tariffs to bring it back onshore and make foreign goods less comeptitive. or America is highly self-sufficient and doesn't need much, negating the entire purpose of tariffs in the first place...so why apply them at all if they have no effect
        hollerith 1y ago
        I never expressed support for Trump's tariffs. I even called them "silly"!
7952 1y ago
Surely hardware has much more of an economic moat than software, services, and payment services. And the manufacturing of that is dominated by China and to a lesser extent Korea and Taiwan. All of whom have an interest in seeing hardware take a greater cut of value and for software to be commoditised. And it is common and possible for powerful countries or regions to build alternatives. India already has a payment system that is larger than Visa for digital and includes P2P and P2M.
noirscape 1y ago
Most of the US's power is contingent in part on them not rocking the boat too much. That's what the current US administration is destabilizing; by harming its own allies, those allies in turn are starting to look for other options. With the exception of IT software, the US has little dominance in any individual sector. IT hardware largely isn't produced in the US, it's produced in Taiwan (TSMC) and Europe (ASML), and then assembled in China. Payment services aren't a source of US power, they're a consequence; the US allowed itself to be a delivery market, making those payment services a soft requirement for anyone dealing with the US. If anything, the US payment networks are generally seen with scorn outside the US; they're painfully dated (US banks largely rely on a system designed for physical cheques to this day) and the companies running them are often subject to the whims of astroturfing activists, resulting in legal transactions being blocked because someone thinks buying porn is icky, even though it's legal. US payment companies are also notorious for being hard to get a hold of to enforce your rights as a customer; Paypal has to follow several EU laws, but they mostly dodge enforcement by putting their HQ in Luxembourg, which is so small that they can effectively employ all well-paid financial lawyers in that country, leaving any duped customers with very little options because of conflicts of interests. Most of the worlds dependence is on the US as a delivery market; if the US stops being attractive (ie. because it's too expensive bc of tariffs for US importers to buy goods), then the world will gradually compensate, even if it is economically unpleasant for a while. The only other dependence is military, but don't worry there; the US is doing a great job making it's military allies realize that it's bad at helping them, since POTUS is actively interested in working with the enemies of the US instead. Offshoring is going to become more common because of how the tariffs are blanket rates; if I am going to make a product, there's only two possible options to avoid tariffs as much as possible: only import primary goods to the US and process everything on-site (keep in mind, you're still paying a tariff for even these materials). That's very expensive, in part because American labour is expensive. It's also not very realistic; your average product these days flies it's components across several countries before it ends up being put together. Even if you source all your manufacturing locally, you're still dealing with the fact your suppliers don't. The other option is to... just pay the tariffs at the end of the supply chain. Raise prices on US customers, try to route your entire production chain around the US. That's what the great brands are doing right now. They aren't going to publicly declare price increases if they can help it (because the risk of political retaliation is real under the current US administration), but expect the next products in their pipeline to have significant price increases to make the customer eat the tariffs. This in no small part happens also because ultimately, the tariffs are seen as temporary; moving a production pipeline entirely to the US can take up to a decade. Most companies are assuming that the tariffs will be gone in ~3.5-4 years when the administration leaves. That's not worth setting up a real production pipeline for in the US.
thisisit 1y ago
You seem to be unaware of world history or local politics. India US relationship has historically been bad. It turned around only during the Bush administration with the civil nuclear treaty. So, this good relationship has been there for last 25 years or so. In comparison India has a longer history with Russia. India was one of the first countries to start working on a deal with US. India subsidizes agriculture as much as US. Indian farmers are a big voting block. Hence the trade deal has been at stuck: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/donald-trumps-25-tariff-india-expects-minimal-impact-indicates-agriculture-dairy-gm-food-no-go-areas-in-trade-deal-talks/articleshow/123042641.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/... That means it is a political suicide for the current Indian government to sign any sort of deal with Trump unless the agriculture part is removed. And as much you want to tout IT services, overall GDP contribution is 11.47% and pharma is 1.72%. Someone has told me that the remittances from India to US is 3%. All that combines to less than 19% contributed by agriculture. Add the fact that previous US administration was okay with India buying Russian oil to help stabilize global oil prices: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-wanted-india-to-buy-russian-oil-when-ukraine-war-started-what-changed-9022516 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-wanted-india-to-buy-russi... That just pours more fuel on fire. Pun intended. Additionally, I don't get why people keep thinking that getting deals is some sort of a master plan. Countries routinely break their deals. Its not only US - who you think has "lot of power" which gets to do that. Countries go to WTO to try and resolve it but US has chosen to side step that as well. Case in point US Canada diary dispute: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds103_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds103_e... If you think US has "lots of power" and countries, in the long term, are not going to intentionally make things difficult, I have a bridge to sell you.
- sifar 1y ago
  >> And as much you want to tout IT services, overall GDP contribution is 11.47% and pharma is 1.72%. Someone has told me that the remittances from India to US is 3%. All that combines to less than 19% contributed by agriculture. That is the direct GDP contribution of IT/allied services. The indirect societal contribution is significant. Most real estate in big cities, transportation, food and other services rely on the IT industry. Expect a lot of pain in India when this is impacted.
rstuart4133 1y ago
> Into whose arms precisely? India into China's? Not likely! Australia's trade with China in 2024: $102.63B Australia's trade with India in 2024: $16.48B Australia's trade with USA in 2024: $14.73B Australia's trade with NZ in 2024: $8.24B https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-by-country https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-by-country Australia and NZ are already in Asia's arms economically. That's why AusPost shutting down transit shipping to the USA won't be a huge hit. If it was to China, it would hurt. But not the USA.

bamboozled 1y ago

With all due respect, can you outline why the current version of America is actually better than China? I mean China has major issues but I'm starting to lose sight of what makes the USA a better more trustworthy ally who protects freedom and democracy? I'm not saying "it's over" but there are a lot of troubling signs it's going in the wrong direction fast. In the case of India and China, I think it's more of a case of India becoming more independent, which is "good" on the one hand ,but probably terrible for American hegemony and they will just side more with Russia and continue to buy resources from them. I'm not sure if Americans can really grasp how their soft power around the world is vaporizing by the day. Even at it's peak, probably Obama era, I wouldn't say America was default popular, now, I don't know what to say but it's really looking as if people are just deciding to move on from the American experiment as we realize it might not be coming back. Look at places like Switzerland cancelling orders of F35s, just a coincidence ? I guess smaller countries aren't being left with much choice, that's the fundamental issue. Edit: I'm not worried about the down votes, but I also think it's sad and maybe even a sign that people have sore feelings about reality?

safety1st 1y ago
I appreciate that you asked the question and actually want to learn about foreign affairs between two non Western countries! So to just scratch the surface, China and India had a full blown war in the 1960s and have had armed conflict on their shared border many times, most recently in 2021. Meanwhile China actually INVADED Vietnam in 1979, four years after the US-Vietnam War ended! Both of these countries view China as an immediate potential military threat because it is one, they have fought actual wars with it. It's so wild how there are all these Western liberals who think Trump is somehow worse than this, I don't even like the guy but these people obviously don't know shit about the history of the region. The history is China warring with these countries!
- lenkite 1y ago
  Do note that the 2020-21 conflict was not a "truly armed" conflict per-se. Unless you count biological, human arms with the occasional use of sticks. Most of it involved muscle power and no firearms. I personally find it remarkable that two large nations can have a border conflict without a single gunshot fired.
  - safety1st 1y ago
    What? Per independent sources shots were fired and dozens were killed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%93India_skirmishes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%8...
    - lenkite 1y ago
      Warning shots into the air are fine. There are border agreements not to use firearms directly against soldiers. This was religiously followed by both sides - no one died because of gunshots.
    - porridgeraisin 1y ago
      The actual battle was hand+sticks "guerilla". All shots were warning shots and did not occur as part of the actual guerilla fight. The shots happened at multiple places in different times.
      - safety1st 1y ago
        Shots were fired along the LAC for the first time in 45 years and according to independent sources dozens were killed. So what if they weren't killed by the bullets? What is with this weird downplaying of the conflict? India/China tensions are high and they recently killed each other on their border!
        kelipso 1y ago
        Modi just visited China earlier this month, last visit was 2019, so India-China relations are better now and tensions aren't that high anymore.

lm28469 1y ago

100 years ago the British Empire ruled the world, today it's a small island nobody care about. People underestimate how fast things can move

arethuza 1y ago
The GDP of the USA overtook that of the British Empire in 1916 (which is actually a lot later than I was expecting): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_British_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_British_Empire
- bamboozled 1y ago
  Do you think the GDP of the USA will keep growing / maintain if it isolates itself further?
  - hollerith 1y ago
    Yes. The US economy is not particularly dependent on international trade. If it were, Trump's silly tariffs would have been stopped by now.
    - bamboozled 1y ago
      You seem to be contradicting yourself. One of the key goals of the tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to the US. Yet you're saying the US doesn't rely on trade, which one is it? Manufacturing is offshored so you need tariffs to bring it back onshore and make foreign goods less comeptitive. or America is highly self-sufficient and doesn't need much, negating the entire purpose of tariffs in the first place...so why apply them at all if they have no effect
      - hollerith 1y ago
        I never expressed support for Trump's tariffs. I even called them "silly"!

7952 1y ago

Surely hardware has much more of an economic moat than software, services, and payment services. And the manufacturing of that is dominated by China and to a lesser extent Korea and Taiwan. All of whom have an interest in seeing hardware take a greater cut of value and for software to be commoditised. And it is common and possible for powerful countries or regions to build alternatives. India already has a payment system that is larger than Visa for digital and includes P2P and P2M.

noirscape 1y ago

Most of the US's power is contingent in part on them not rocking the boat too much. That's what the current US administration is destabilizing; by harming its own allies, those allies in turn are starting to look for other options. With the exception of IT software, the US has little dominance in any individual sector. IT hardware largely isn't produced in the US, it's produced in Taiwan (TSMC) and Europe (ASML), and then assembled in China. Payment services aren't a source of US power, they're a consequence; the US allowed itself to be a delivery market, making those payment services a soft requirement for anyone dealing with the US. If anything, the US payment networks are generally seen with scorn outside the US; they're painfully dated (US banks largely rely on a system designed for physical cheques to this day) and the companies running them are often subject to the whims of astroturfing activists, resulting in legal transactions being blocked because someone thinks buying porn is icky, even though it's legal. US payment companies are also notorious for being hard to get a hold of to enforce your rights as a customer; Paypal has to follow several EU laws, but they mostly dodge enforcement by putting their HQ in Luxembourg, which is so small that they can effectively employ all well-paid financial lawyers in that country, leaving any duped customers with very little options because of conflicts of interests. Most of the worlds dependence is on the US as a delivery market; if the US stops being attractive (ie. because it's too expensive bc of tariffs for US importers to buy goods), then the world will gradually compensate, even if it is economically unpleasant for a while. The only other dependence is military, but don't worry there; the US is doing a great job making it's military allies realize that it's bad at helping them, since POTUS is actively interested in working with the enemies of the US instead. Offshoring is going to become more common because of how the tariffs are blanket rates; if I am going to make a product, there's only two possible options to avoid tariffs as much as possible: only import primary goods to the US and process everything on-site (keep in mind, you're still paying a tariff for even these materials). That's very expensive, in part because American labour is expensive. It's also not very realistic; your average product these days flies it's components across several countries before it ends up being put together. Even if you source all your manufacturing locally, you're still dealing with the fact your suppliers don't. The other option is to... just pay the tariffs at the end of the supply chain. Raise prices on US customers, try to route your entire production chain around the US. That's what the great brands are doing right now. They aren't going to publicly declare price increases if they can help it (because the risk of political retaliation is real under the current US administration), but expect the next products in their pipeline to have significant price increases to make the customer eat the tariffs. This in no small part happens also because ultimately, the tariffs are seen as temporary; moving a production pipeline entirely to the US can take up to a decade. Most companies are assuming that the tariffs will be gone in ~3.5-4 years when the administration leaves. That's not worth setting up a real production pipeline for in the US.

thisisit 1y ago

You seem to be unaware of world history or local politics. India US relationship has historically been bad. It turned around only during the Bush administration with the civil nuclear treaty. So, this good relationship has been there for last 25 years or so. In comparison India has a longer history with Russia. India was one of the first countries to start working on a deal with US. India subsidizes agriculture as much as US. Indian farmers are a big voting block. Hence the trade deal has been at stuck: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/donald-trumps-25-tariff-india-expects-minimal-impact-indicates-agriculture-dairy-gm-food-no-go-areas-in-trade-deal-talks/articleshow/123042641.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/... That means it is a political suicide for the current Indian government to sign any sort of deal with Trump unless the agriculture part is removed. And as much you want to tout IT services, overall GDP contribution is 11.47% and pharma is 1.72%. Someone has told me that the remittances from India to US is 3%. All that combines to less than 19% contributed by agriculture. Add the fact that previous US administration was okay with India buying Russian oil to help stabilize global oil prices: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-wanted-india-to-buy-russian-oil-when-ukraine-war-started-what-changed-9022516 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-wanted-india-to-buy-russi... That just pours more fuel on fire. Pun intended. Additionally, I don't get why people keep thinking that getting deals is some sort of a master plan. Countries routinely break their deals. Its not only US - who you think has "lot of power" which gets to do that. Countries go to WTO to try and resolve it but US has chosen to side step that as well. Case in point US Canada diary dispute: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds103_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds103_e... If you think US has "lots of power" and countries, in the long term, are not going to intentionally make things difficult, I have a bridge to sell you.

sifar 1y ago
>> And as much you want to tout IT services, overall GDP contribution is 11.47% and pharma is 1.72%. Someone has told me that the remittances from India to US is 3%. All that combines to less than 19% contributed by agriculture. That is the direct GDP contribution of IT/allied services. The indirect societal contribution is significant. Most real estate in big cities, transportation, food and other services rely on the IT industry. Expect a lot of pain in India when this is impacted.

rstuart4133 1y ago

> Into whose arms precisely? India into China's? Not likely! Australia's trade with China in 2024: $102.63B Australia's trade with India in 2024: $16.48B Australia's trade with USA in 2024: $14.73B Australia's trade with NZ in 2024: $8.24B https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-by-country https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-by-country Australia and NZ are already in Asia's arms economically. That's why AusPost shutting down transit shipping to the USA won't be a huge hit. If it was to China, it would hurt. But not the USA.