By Pepe Escobar : Posted with permission
Biggest story at ASEAN was convergence of moves toward Asia integration, leaving Delhi out for now
Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi during the 16th ASEAN-India Summit in Nonthaburi, Thailand, on November 3, 2019. Photo: AFP / Anton Raharjo / Anadolu Agency
A pan-Asia high-speed train has left the station – and India – behind. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which would have been the largest free trade deal in the world, was not signed in Bangkok. It will probably be signed next year in Vietnam, assuming New Delhi goes beyond what ASEAN, with diplomatic finesse barely concealing frustration, described as “outstanding issues, which remain unresolved.”
The partnership uniting 16 nations – the ASEAN 10 plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and, in theory, India – would have congregated 3.56 billion people and 29% of world trade.
Predictably, it was billed as the big story among the slew of high-profile meetings linked to the 35th ASEAN summit in Thailand, as RCEP de facto further integrates Asian economies with China just as the Trump administration is engaged in a full spectrum battle against everything from the Belt and Road Initiative to Made in China 2025.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng was blunt: “It’s the 15 nations that have decided to move forward first.” And he added “there won’t be any problem for the 15 nations to sign RCEP next year,” when Vietnam takes over as the chair of ASEAN.
It’s not hard to figure out where the “problem” lies.
Mahathir ‘disappointed’
Diplomats confirmed that New Delhi came up with a string of last-minute demands in Thailand, forcing many to work deep into the night with no success. Thailand’s Commerce Minister, Jurin Laksanawisit, tried to put on a brave face: “The negotiation last night was conclusive.”
It was not. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad – whose facial expression in the family photo was priceless, as he shook hands with Aung San Suu Kyi on his left and nobody on his right – had already given away the game. “We’re very disappointed,” he said, adding: “One country is making demands we cannot accept.”
ASEAN, that elaborate monument to punctilious protocol and face-saving, insists the few outstanding issues “will be resolved by February 2020,” with the text of all 20 RCEP chapters complete “pending the resolution of one” member.
RCEP dwells across a large territory, covering trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property and dispute resolution. The Indian “problem” is extremely complex. India in fact already has a free trade agreement with ASEAN.
RCEP, in practice, would extend this agreement to the other big boys, including China, Japan and South Korea.
New Delhi insists it is defending farmers, dairy owners, the services industry, sectors of the automobile industry – especially hybrid and electric cars, and very popular three-wheelers – and mostly small businesses all across the nation, which would be devastated by an augmented tsunami of Chinese merchandise.
Agriculture, textile, steel and mining interests in India are totally against RCEP.
Yet New Delhi never mentions quality Japanese or South Korean products. It’s all about China. New Delhi argues that signing what is widely interpreted as a free trade agreement with China would explode its already significant US$57 billion a year trade deficit.
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.
Modi, who is not exactly a bold statesman with a global vision, is between a heavy rock and a very hard place. President Xi Jinping offered him a “100-year plan” for China-India partnership at their last informal, bilateral summit.
India is a fellow BRICS member, it’s part of the Russia-India-China troika that is actually at the center of BRICS and is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Geopolitically as well as geoeconomically, it hardly makes sense for India to be out of RCEP – which means excluded from East Asia and Southeast Asia integration. The only feasible solution might be an elaborate bilateral India-China deal within RCEP.
Questions remain whether both players would be able to work that out before the Vietnam summit in 2020.
Putting it all together
India was only part of the story of the summit fest in Thailand. At the important East Asia Summit, everyone was actively discussing multiple paths towards multilateralism.
The Trump administration is touting what it calls the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy – which is yet another de facto China containment strategy, congregating the US, India, Japan and Australia. Indo-Pacific is very much on Modi’s mind. The problem is “Indo-Pacific,” as the US conceives of it, and RCEP are incompatible.
ASEAN, instead, came up with its own strategy: ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) – which incorporates all the usual transparency, good governance, sustainable development and rules-based tenets plus details on connectivity and maritime disputes.
All the ASEAN 10 are behind AOIP, which is, in fact, an original Indonesian idea. It’s fascinating to know that Bangkok and Jakarta worked together behind closed doors for no fewer than 18 months to reach a full consensus among the ASEAN 10.
The biggest story in Thailand was, in fact, the convergence of myriad moves towards Asia integration. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang was lavishly praising the prospects of integrating Belt and Road with something called the Master Plan of ASEAN Activity, which is the connectivity part of AOIP.
South Korea’s Moon Jae-in jumped in extolling the merits of his Southern Policy, which is essentially northeast-southeast Asia integration. And don’t forget Russia.
At the ASEAN business and investment summit, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev put it all together; the blossoming of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, uniting the Eurasia Economic Union, ASEAN and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, not to mention, in his words, “other possible structures,” which is code for Belt and Road.
Belt and Road is powerfully advancing its links to RCEP, Eurasia Economic Union and even South America’s Mercosur – when Brazil finally kicks Jair Bolsonaro out of power.
Medvedev noted that this merging of interests was unanimously supported at the Russia-ASEAN summit in Sochi in 2016. Vietnam and Singapore have already clinched free trade deals with Eurasia Economic Union, and Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia are on their way.
Medvedev also noted that a trade and economic cooperation deal between China and Eurasia Economic Union was signed in late October. Next is India, and a preferential trade agreement between the union and Iran has also been signed.
In Thailand, the Chinese delegation did not directly address the United States’ Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. But Medvedev did, forcefully: “We are in favor of maintaining the effective system of state-to-state relations which was formed on the basis of ASEAN and has shown a good track record over the years.
“In this regard, we believe the US initiative is a serious challenge for ASEAN countries, since it can weaken the association’s position and strip it of its status as a key player in addressing regional security problems.”
Summits come and go. But what just happened in Thailand will remain as another graphic illustration of myriad, concerted moves leading towards progressive, irreversible Asia – and Eurasia – integration. It’s up to Modi to decide when and if to hop on the train.
So, just in … we have the next phase called The Blue Dot Project, an initiative that wants to compete with Belt and Road by the US, Australia and Japan. They’re going to do the same as Belt and Road they say, only with private finance and make a type of a ratings organization that will ‘vet and rate’ Belt and Road projects.
War of words being set up here and now we know why only junior US staff attended the RCEP negotiations (and also probably have something to do with why India withdrew at the last minutes).
Here is the Financial Times – spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about Belt and Road.
The Financial times does not want me to place a link or even do a short quote. Essentially they say that there is ‘growing unease’ in Asia about Belt and Road and the US will unveil a certification scheme setting ‘international standards’ for big infrastructure projects.
(I’m sure China is trembling in their boots grins).
Zerohedge also has an article .. it is fairly correct as far as I can judge and more Belt and Road friendly than the Financial Times announcement.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-challenges-chinas-belt-and-road-new-global-infrastructure-scheme
I’m thinking of an insult that we used to one another in school – Jealousy makes you nasty! And The Blue Dots – well I don’t know .. Blue Dots on paper only?
@amarynth …………..Very interesting.
Carney representing Western Banks only have the green bond and clima projects vision, The usual expensive pouring money down the drain for third poor countries benefitting International Banks only.
So the only thing West can come up with now is stealing the OBOR concept to private banks finance. That’s quite funny.
It’s moronic–the private sector just won’t build that kind of infrastructure. The benefits are too long term, the risks are too great, and the project is too big. The private sector wants profits fast with low risk; it’s why sequels dominate the movie industry. The only way the neoliberal PPP pushers get any action to happen is to pay the private outfits so much they can’t possibly lose and give them loopholes so they can bail when they manage to anyway. And even there, big projects tend to stall.
Which happens because, in the glorious ‘Free World’, the financier, bankster, parasites own the ruling regimes, the phony ‘competing’ political parties, the brainwashing propaganda systems etc, and they call the shots. Meanwhile, under ‘autocracy’, the ruling regimes control the money men, the ‘entrepreneurs’ and the merchant class in general, and they are made to act in the common interest, at least to some degree, not against it.
India is the weak link in the coalescing multifarious East.
The US is trying to use India to spike the BRI and sow whatever chaos it can.
The Blue Dot Project is the US attempt to push financial capitalism neoliberal economics (the usual plowing and plundering) to counter the BRI, a kind of sick joke that with its inherent contradictions can be predicted to not succeed.
Right under The Blue Dot Project are the CIA, NSA, Wall Street, and demented button pushing US elites.
The question is simple. Is India sabotaging regional co-operation out of fear of the reaction of the greedy, self-interested, Indian business elites (forget the guff about small farmers and the burgeoning poor)or out of a desire to please the USA and Israel in subverting Eurasian development, that which the West fears so very much? Or both. India has been so very badly served by its elites, and the ludicrous ‘democratic’ system that sets state against state, region against region, class against class, caste against caste, city against country etc, with wealthy expatriate Indians serving the interests of their new homes, not their ancestral ones, that one is almost driven to tears.
Reading this article, and how India objected and Malaysia ( GREAT – This shows its a Zionist Plan if Malay objects ), this all reminds me of how the CIA created the EU, and then destroyed Europe.
Things right now in ASIA are great, which is why USA wants to fix things.
India is right, they shouldn’t give-away the farmers right to make a profit.
Here I’ll tell you what the CIA did to Europe, prior to the EU, everybody everywhere was fat, dumb, and happy, Greece, Spain, …
Then the EU came and said Bulgarian will make Cheese, Italy wine, Olives will be grown in Spain. What happened is that entire greek villages died, people who used to make cheese&olives folded, the kinds went to Athens and the girls became whores and the boys drug-dealers and/or min wage workers, … same everywhere, the villages were destoryed, and the the children lost a generation or more
Now the same people are trying to do the same thing in ASIA, and India isn’t going for it, and of course Malaysia is the only hold-out that will NOT dance with Neo-Nazi-ZIonists and their plans and minions.
Lastly let’s get back to “VIETNAM”, they make tennis in slave-camps, the sew all the clothes sold at REI in USA, the south of vietnam is a modern slave colony ran by Zionists, the people who the USA that own Nike & Columbia Sports are all tribe tied to Netanyahu, and they now make all their merchandise in Vietnamese slave labor centers.
This is the plan, but regionally control what people make, so they must be mobile, once the children leave the family village then the ASIAN society is DESTROYED, just like they did to Europe.
mortimer, what you outline was possible because the USA and its Atlanticist Quislings controlled the European regimes, whereas in Asia, with a few exceptions, the ruling classes are less beholden to Thanatopolis DC, and with China a real alternative, and the USA crumbling, this independence can only grow. And the system that China is creating is different from the ‘Washington Consensus’ system, of maximum short-term pillage to enrich Western economic interests and local compradores, in that it prioritises building infrastructure, public provision in education, health, transport etc, local consumption and awareness of the need to create a sustainable ‘ecological civilization’, otherwise the ‘long-term’ will arrive rather earlier than expected, and ‘..we’ll all be dead’.
I think India answers all the questions here elegantly
China is the problem
1.) India has poor manufacturing ( they make big tractor, but can’t compete in personal electronics )
2.) Majority of AG in India is ma-pa (+60%) operation, not AG-BIZ like China-USA-ZION, this AG cannot compete
3.) TPTB specifically excluded services, which is the strength of India
India excels in math, physics, in people in thinking, but this is specifically excluded,
In summary if China wants to let its locust loose on India, then China must be reciprocative in letting India play its strengths, and not giving the crown jewels away to China.
youtube.com/watch?v=SYyigbIaBKY
I suggest here everybody watch this video, its from Sep 2019, well before this event in October.
I think INDIA cares about its people,
More begs the question is while I love bashing USA, and support Russia-China, this is clearly a case where CHINA intends to destroy India, so where is the Israel-Palestine sympathy of Goliath vs David? SAKER? PEPE?
More & More in recent days I see more&more pro zion missions being pushed on SAKER, :(
Outstanding summary Mortimer.
We have ignorant fools who presume they know what’s best for India, but they themselves are clueless about economics and the conditions in Asia. They sit at their discount computers and pontificate about what’s best for India or Malaysia without having any knowledge or professional background about that region. It is quite amusing, but mildly sad for these poor self appointed omniscient experts.
These multilateral trade deals are anti sovereignist and only benefit multinational corporations, it’s unimportant if the multinational corporations is chinese, America, European, Indian,Japanese or Brazilian; the small and medium sized domestic sector in each country gets destroyed.
@Mortimer
That video really gave a good insight into the specific concerns of India. If China lives up to it’s claims it should be relatively simple to adjust the whole. In fact China itself would be dead in the water already a long time ago if it had openend it’s markets (mostly finance of course) fully to the western onslaught (Japan anyone (which out of obvious reasons could not resist) ?), it wisely resisted firmly, thus it has to acknowledge the valid Indian concerns naturally or else the whole will fail anyway.
Outstanding summery Mulga. India has great potential but seems to always fall flat on its face; their behavior so frustrating.
I do not like generalizing at all but after working with many nationalities around the world, I have noticed that many (but not all) of the Kurds, Israelis and Indians have a lot of similarities with one another. They can be very hard headed, stubborn, not easy to admit faults, very nationalistic and have a great admiration for the West in general and the USA in specific, possibly a fascination and respect for people with power. I am not sure if this is related to any historic similarities between them.
Lets just say that I can imagine from a professional point of view that it can be a challenge getting things off the ground to successfully negotiate deals with some of them, but this is only my experience.
Could it be their Stockholm syndrome being a British colony? You know in India you are a very fine person if you live or have been schooled in England.
That’s actually called Post Colonial Slave Mentality.
Don’t forget the caste system, and the triumph of Hindutva fascism, and the malign influence of overseas Indians, particularly in the USA, hence the animosity towards China, and concentrated in high-tech, hence needing to play Sabbat Goy useful idiots to the Zionazis, who REALLY fear China. There’ll never be a ruling ‘Confucian Zionist’ or ‘Maoist Zionist’ Fifth Column in China.
Yes, the CASTE system is a serious problem
Years ago in the USA I used to sponsor H1B visas brought in many Chinese phd’s, great people
Every once and awhile I would get an “INDIAN” and they were great personable and intelligent, we would give them the job,
But almost everytime first day on job “Why are you giving me this??, I don’t work I’m brahmin, you need to give this job to a lower caste”, … well the problem is the lower caste in USA don’t have your education.
So then I quickly learned over the years that only the elite got the PHD in SW/HW engineering, not the poor kids in India
in CHINA it was complete opposite they tested all the children, if you were 5 years old and had a math aptitude, you went to math school, and all the Chinese that came to USA to finish their PHD had burnt the bridge, they would be a failure if they failed
But the INDIAN’s upon failure could just say “They wanted me to work”, and they would go home, and all would be good
In summary comparing India & China ppl, is like comparing Dog’s and Cat’s they both have 4 legs, but that is about where the similarity ends
How can India compete with a billion chinese, who all work their asses off?
It would be totally unfair, unless all chinese were required to amputate a limb and gov perform a frontal lobotomy upon entry to India. Given this is not likely to happen, its most likely that India becomes an Island of backwardness, not unlike Africa.
I’m not saying this is good or bad, just saying what is, that is,
Not every place should be like Israel?? RIght
Now, just who the # % € @ does this Modi think are going to be impressed by Modi as a politician and India as a country? Really, it is very instructive to look at India’s and China’s history since the late 1940s when they both emerged as newly-liberated, extremely immiserated countries due to the tender, loving care of British imperialism; in China’s case further reinforced by the genocidal frenzy of the Japanese. The Chinese rooted out the squalor as they, just like the USSR, made giant leaps in public education, industrialization, sanitation, and modernization overall. India, by contrast, hasn’t even addressed its horrendous rural poverty and the equally shocking, quite widespread practice of infanticide against baby girls. Sadly, India has remained a third world country to the hilt. If there is one country that could pull India out of the Third World based upon similar historical experiences and highly successful results, that country is China.
At bottom, Modi’s India is not too different from Greenclown’s and Poroshenko’s Ukraine. Both these countries are led by grossly incompetent reactionaries that refuse to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation with their successful, greater neighbouring countries. The brand of fascism that we have come to know as Hindutva underlines the similarity further still, even including the Swastikas.
DALIO and all the elite owners of the USA are saying to invest in INDIA, that its going to be the best stock market return in coming years.
Now chew on that.
What’s happening here is that the Tribe wants a bigger cut of India, and MODI ain’t giving it to them, and neither is Malaysia.
India and China acting together could change the world for the better, starting with India’s teeming millions. But the infinitely corrupt Indian ruling classes prefer being boot-lickers to the West. China will just wait, hoping for the day when India’s infinitely corrupt and self-harming ‘democracy’ breaks free of its servile adoration of Westerners who regard them with undisguised contempt. Meanwhile India careers towards ecological, demographic, economic and spiritual catastrophe.
‘Spiritual catastrophe’ is way too extreme. Indians have a racial issue with the Chinese for sure. And with Africans, blacks, whites… you name it. Even with themselves. The big problem is internal govt corruption. India remains very very free compared to all outer countries. One can say and do as one pleases. Not so in china!
Tell the Kashmiris that, Atul. Or the Untouchables, or those Moslems lynched for allegedly eating cows, or the children raped and murdered by upper caste thugs. Or the tens of thousands of farmers forced to suicide by Government policies. Or the tribals run off their lands by various thugs.
So tell me mulga, how have your people treated the aborigines? You seem to have bought into the West’s propaganda on demonizing the countries they try to Balkanize, just like you’ve bought into ridiculous western establishment fake global warming lie. It is quite rich to see you claim you are against westerner imperialism while you simultaneously flog their now obvious and ridiculous propaganda (like the human caused greenhouse gas warming myth).
Typically anonymouse-I revile my country’s treatment of the blackfellas (as they call themselves). It was and continues to be despicable, because many on the Right remain ardent racists, as they have for generations. The rest of your assertions are utterly without merit, the climate denialism in particular, I’m afraid.
Well lets look at facts on the ground, I know nothing about you, do you travel?
In the past 30 years China has gone from Agrarian to Tomorrow-World(disneyland), but much of India, is not unlike most of Africa, where people are in utter poverty, where a condom, costs more than sex, and thus nobody uses a condom.
So China has brought its people from $5/day to $500/day in what? Twenty years? In the meantime in India or Africa a $1 USD bill is still big money :(
I used to be able to travel for weeks and not spend $100 in China (+30 years ago), now $100 will not even get you through the day :(, I can’t get through $500/day in the USA, if I want a USA lifestyle in China today I have to spend $1k/day
INDIA wants to do what China has done, but sadly CHINA got rich by collectively screwing the world ( africa, europe, … themselves ) to achieve this, at some point using the zionist model, there is nobody left to screw, so then what do you do?
I highly suspect that we’re at this point now, which is why everybody is salivating on the INDIA economy.
The USA has allowed out its nation, school and medical have bankrupted all, the norm in USA is now drugs and feces and sleeping on the street, is this really a goal for India?
Mulga, you really should refrain from using the term bootlicker. Let the irony sink in.
Please explain.
India still runs the trains inherited from the British Raj. Prone to derailments, fires, etc.
India is playing a game ; Modi has no sincerity and hasn’t kept his commitment to Asean countries or the BRI in many instances. There was much talk about India overtaking China some time back -1-2 years ago but now we can say, not really, not yet anyway. Air pollution in Delhi is beyond the internationally acceptable level, their trains and roads are handed down by the British colonials and their transport seem more of the last world than the present 21st century’s. So what has India achieved since he 1940s? I believe many Indians would like their country to go the Chinese way but it’s tragic to see that there’re also many nasty China haters who troll Youtube. As such, India is a bit of the odd man out among Asean countries , except for Vietnam, which also harbour some China haters for reasons we can’t conceive and which is also uncharacteristic of Asean people who mainly have love and respect for other countries, and in particular, China due to their shared history, culture and trade.
India will never catch China, let alone surpass it, because its system, neo-liberal capitalism with a facade of ‘democracy’ produces very poor results for all but the elites. China, in contrast, has a Chinese version of State capitalism with Chinese characteristics, where planning is not left to ‘The Market ie the rich and their corporations, where profit maximisation and short-termism rule, but is undertaken by the meritocratic Government system, and plans are made for short, medium and long-terms, and for perpetuity in the case of the ‘Ecological Civilization’.
The issue in India is not the elites or businessmen but the government : the indian govt is the worlds largest mafia by far. There’s insane corruption at all levels and 70-80% of money is simply siphoned off. So the public education Systems, roads, Infrastructure and utilities are completely primitive. The insanity of corruption in India is one of the big unknown stories of the global economy
Oh so China’s economic model of screwing the world and building up a massive bad debt bubble (worse than the USA) is something others should emulate? Really? You clearly have no background in economics and you’ve bought into the BRI without examining what its real purpose is. The elite in China are selfish and don’t care about those below them, they look at them with disdain, just like the attitude of Hong Kong residents towards the rest of China (they think of themselves as superior and the Chinese masses as unwashed peasants).
Mod: Lots and lots of nastiness going around tonight, folks. Please DIAL IT DOWN or a lot more comments are going to be going into the trash.
Rubbish piled on garbage all doused in a good quantity of racist contempt and arrogance-a veritable salad fit for a dung beetle. Some anonymouse cowards are more identifiable than others.
RCEP is…
to put in gently – a LOCK DOWN
to put it bluntly – a KILL SHOT
putting an end to TPP and its other bizzaro variation… the west is, once the regional agreement is enforced, OUT!
Perhaps Pepe can give the reader here the finer details – its quite brilliant!
Well what do we know?
We know that the tribe (Nazi-ZIONISM) brought Mao to power
We know that RCEP will turn India into a colony of China.
Now why would anybody support this??
youtube.com/watch?v=SYyigbIaBKY
The most serious question here is why does Malaysia PUSH this so hard? I thought they were anti-zion? R they really just another limited hangout/controlled-opposition tool in this new-world-odor? ( odor not order )
Everybody and his dog wants INDIA, huge market, english speaking, The japanese, taiwanese, chinese ( of course aust/nz ) 5-7 eyes, I mean everybody wants this market, the usual suspect of suspect.
Why is INDIA’s position not given a fair venue in this forum?
Why should they kill the MA&PA agri-biz? Which means that 100’s of millions of teens would have to go to the city’s to be prostitutes?? Why should they do this for what? For who?
If you are going down that road,
you will seriously need to and be wise to go way way beyond the used western template narrative of –
“We know that the tribe (Nazi-ZIONISM) brought Mao to power
We know that RCEP will turn India into a colony of China.”
Unless you get paid for the standard cut and paste western script (your job?),
the tribe (Nazi-ZIONISM) is really low level dogs on a collar
they only excel in deception.
But if it is your truest concern,
more thinking would probably be required to avoid being caught by their shadow there…. Oppppssss!
And you can learn how to save yourself too.
If you can come up with some names from the east,
I would be more impressed,
if you want to talk about china’s or russia’s or india’s darkside,
like some “insider pro”.
p/s surely you know USSA didn’t win WWII?
Living in India, it is easy to understand why India hasn’t joined the pact. It’s just not competitive enough. China and japan are notoriously closed markets and India is no match for their manufacturing prowess. with corruption rampant within the system, protected industries are far behind so it becomes suicidal to allow free trade
Well that would be a proper intellectual response, but what would the solution be?
…
Seriously??
…
It’s not like 1 year, or every 10+ years could fix the India problems. Its like a handicap race, we would have to knee-cap everybody in China to have a fair race, so that’s not going to happen.
We all know that India is/was balkanized, and might be argued that the UK ( anglo-zionists ) left it that way be design
China now makes better mobile phones than Apple, yet India doesn’t even have a end-user consumer electronic manufacturing capability, let alone a product.
Much of India, say Bangalore has been generating 100’s of 1,000’s of coders to go to Microsoft, or write MCAS for Boeing at $8/hr (USD), but there is little reason for them to open up their AG&Hard-Goods to the world-market (Free-Trade), when they have nothing to trade in return, why would India want to become the next USA, with 99% of consumables sold by WALMARTnINDIA????
India doesn’t want to become a USA, they have a higher opinion of themselves, than to be hairlip ex-penal colony tax-slaves.
Much of this is about Japan & China running out of new customers, but that is their problem, not Indias problem.
Well like the PROF’s in India are saying.
“Why is that only Manfacturing & AG are given away as free-trade?” Why is it that nothing India can do well open to reciprocative free-trade?
Shall we have a Mahindra tractor compete with a Japanese Kubota? Or better yet, let Kubota & Yanmar (JAPAN) both open manufacturing in INDIA and destroy everything native?
IMHO India is like Africa, but the difference is there are many country’s that can’t be corralled in Africa, but here we have one government in India, that can sell out a billion people over-night.
Chilling.
But like we say in the west “They Know”, the GOYIM know, and so do the rural Indian’s know who is promoting this RCEP, at this point its going be a hard sell, expect them to make a lot of pain, or rejecting their iron-carrot
India is India, its impossible to compete with China, it would be like Modern USA being brought into
No country, not England, not the USA, not South Korea, not Japan, not China, rose to economic power and self-determination by following neo-liberal dogma and opening up their economy to ‘Free Trade’. India must follow the Chinese model, if it can, which is, more or less, the Japanese model, complete, apparently, with the self-destructive subservience to the USA.
Mulga,
The self-destructive subservience is not to the USA, it is to financiers that has also resulted in the self-destructive subservience of the USA. Our trade deficets, employment statistics, as well as our national debt are proof.
”We know that the tribe (Nazi-ZIONISM) brought Mao to power”
Only to be slandered as an orgiastic criminal scum by them, LOL. Was it really worth it?
These multi-latteral trade deals are always disastrous and always leave everyone miserable, except the financiers.
Everyone involved in NAFTA is unhappy. The ones that always benefit are the bankers. U.S. manufacturers hate them as well as Latin American and Canadians, and all citizens from all countries suffer.
The TPP was a nightmare and if we had been cursed with Hillary or an establishment Republican like Pence or Ryan it may have enslaved us all, allowing corporations to sue sovereign nations for future loss of profits for legislation that may be used to protect workers, citizens, resources, and the environment.
There is really no need for enormous trade deals in order for nations to trade with each other.
Trade deals are really nothing less than legalized bondage.