CAN WE LEARN FROM TRUMP’S AMERICA FIRST POLICY AND FIGHT US MONOPOLIES?


Mukesh Devrari 

India must learn from Donald Trump. He is a true patriot who talks straight. His straight talking uncovers the western sophistication and ideology. West has only one ideology. It is the national interest. Over the last few decades, this national interest turned into white men’s interest. The US treated itself as a large entity representing the interests of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Japan and South Korea were late entrants in the club.

Trump has simply declared the US will abide by the rule-based world order if the existing rules fulfil US interest. If the rules established by the US a few decades back are not compatible with contemporary US national interest, then it has no interest in abiding by those rules. Earlier US regimes were no different, but they were more sophisticated and resorted to manipulative tactics after taking its allies into confidence.

On a trade dispute with China, the US has declared that if trade balance was not corrected than the US will not think twice before leaving the World Trade Organization. After leaving WTO it will prefer to enter into bilateral free trade agreements with each nation separately. China and other emerging powers will be losers, not the US. This is how national interests are pursued. Similarly, Trump also dumped the treaty not to test missiles with Russia and also the treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

If you are an economist, then please keep your indoctrination set aside for a moment and use your common sense. Can you imagine India where all retail shops are owned by foreign nationals and foreign companies? India has decided to become a prostitute who charges nothing for her services.

In India, e-commerce is completely owned and controlled by two US giants. Amazon is soon likely to overtake Flipkart which controls around 40% of the retail market. Indian columnists generally describe India as IT superpower. It makes us elated and happy but in reality, India does not have any global IT companies offering any direct consumer services. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Microsoft, Amazon and a few others have a complete monopoly in India.

On the other hand, China has allowed only Chinese companies to create national privately owned counterparts of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Twitter. Alibaba, an E-commerce giant, founded by Jack Ma likely to become the first trillion dollar company in China. Tencent and Baidu are other large companies, which operate and own as sophisticated technologies and compete with their US counterparts.

Walmart acquired 77% stake in Flipkart in 16 billion dollars. It takes the market valuation of Flipkart to around 20 billion dollars. As far as profitability is concerned, Flipkart did not earn any profit yet since its creation, but it will make a lot of money. Reasons are pretty simple. Masses will make most of their purchases online. India has a huge retail market. Amazon and Flipkart are likely to control the entire e-commerce business in India and reap all benefits of a duopoly.

Currently only youngsters, that too mainly in cities, make their purchases online, but as education level is increasing, internet penetration is rising, wealth is increasing, masses will resort to e-commerce platforms more and more. There are social reasons for their success also. Life in cities is already hectic. Working hours, travelling time, family needs encourage people to adopt a convenient and hassle-free method of making orders online. It saves time, energy and also money.

It is important to remember that India will always remain subservient to western global companies if these companies continued to flourish without any checks and balances. It does mean India should become a socialist. That will be another disaster, but it definitely needs to interpret and challenge the concepts of economics if it did not serve its interest. If are ready to learn from China because of our false sense of superiority, then we can look towards Trump and learn from American First campaign.

end. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA OWNERSHIP AND ISSUES OF SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY

Image
Mukesh Devrari  Transnational media ownership means ownership of media assets by global corporate houses around the world. The word 'transnational' can easily be easily replaced with the term multinational. In other words, when a multinational company owns media companies around the globe that company can be described as a transnational media organization. There are plenty of such organizations, but most vilified among all is owned by Rupert Murdoch.  The nature of media is very different. As you all know media is a plural form of the medium. Production of films, TV serials, drama, theatre and other wings of the cultural industry are also owned by western media companies. Here, the meaning of the word transnational can be extended. Not necessarily western media companies own assets in the third world countries. They create their work in the west and sell it around the world.   It has long been a complaint against western media companies that wherever they go, they dev
Read more

BANNING TIKTOK SENDS RIGHT MESSAGE TO CHINA

Image
Mukesh Devrari   Banning Tiktok in India is without a doubt a great decision by BJP government after the killing of 20 Indian soldiers at the Line of Actual Control at Union Territory of Ladakh. Globally the Tiktok has been downloaded by more than 2 billion smartphone users and 30 per cent of its customers are in India. If the Tiktok will be replaced by an Indian company, only then this ban is worth it, other it is immaterial from India’s point of view. Otherwise, it makes no difference to our national interest whether the parent company is from the United States or China or Congo. Indian companies must intervene and capture the vacated market. They must offer similar apps to users. The Communist Party of China’s (CPC) aggression at the border gave this once in a lifetime opportunity for India’s businesses to capture the vacated spaces. The CPC is responsible for the global downfall of Tiktok & Huawei. First of all, China should use the opportunity of BJP havin
Read more

CAN A GAY MAN BE A US PRESIDENT? WHAT ARE THE CHANCES FOR PETE BUTTIGIEG?

Image
Mukesh Devrari If you are watching the race for the presidential nomination in Democratic Party in the United States, then by now you must have noticed that Pete Buttigieg is the only candidate who is looking like a potential US president. All other candidates don’t appear to have that balance which a politician needs to succeed in Presidential elections. Although this entire debate is useless as Trump is most likely to win US presidential elections on November 2020, probably with a better margin this time. Still, the upcoming elections will be worth watching, if the democratic party succeeds in electing an effective opponent in the internal party struggle for contesting against Trump juggernaut.   Pete Buttigieg is a guy who has created ripples in US politics. He is a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, still only 37 years old. It appears little in his own words audacious on his part to aspire for a White House. There is no doubt he is a bloody genius. Listening to him is
Read more