Economic Imperialism

For instance, the $486-million Walmart of the US, the world's largest company by sales, deals in products, almost 80 per cent of which are sourced from China. To many, Walmart is working more to China's benefit than that of the US. The latter lost lakhs of jobs as its industry failed to combat the challenge of competition from low-cost Chinese supplies. The average American consumers may be happy, but not those that are unemployed. The USA has lost its once global leadership in steel, energy, engineering and microchips to countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Europe. Communist China exercises firm control over domestic manufacturing, export and even the exchange rate of its currency, Renminbi (Yuan). In the last four years, one Chinese Yuan almost constantly equalled 0.16 US dollar. This is unthinkable for a country, which has been running the world's largest trade surplus, year after year. China's overall global trade surplus for 2017 was $422.5 billion. Its trade surplus with the US soared 13 per cent year-on-year to 1.87 trillion Yuan (about $288 billion). Nearly 70 per cent of its global trade surplus comes from the US. On the contrary, the US suffered a global trade deficit in goods and services of $566 billion in 2017, the world's largest. The US trade deficit in goods, without services, was $810 billion. Obviously, the US can't sustain such heavy import trade pressures from China and other countries any longer. This may explain why the US is moving towards protectionism. Since the last global financial crisis in 2008, it has taken over 1,000 protectionist measures. Even former Democratic Party President Barrack Obama was no exception. Other global exporting countries too have taken protectionist measures during this period, but none to match the US's actions.

Therefore, President Trump's latest announcement, imposing hefty tariffs on imported steel and aluminium — selectively, on some countries — to protect the US producers is not surprising. Trump seems to be prepared to take the risk of retaliation from major trade partners like China and Europe. Trump has made it clear that the US plans to impose reciprocal taxes in an outright departure from global trade norms. "We will soon be starting reciprocal taxes so that we will charge the same thing as they charge us. $800 Billion Trade Deficit leaves no choice!" President Trump tweeted. Such taxes would mean that the US will expect developing countries to grant higher trade concessions to developed countries like itself. This will contradict the WTO's concept of non-reciprocity in trade negotiations between the developed and developing countries. However, tweets Trump: "When a country (US) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win."

India is comparatively a small global trading nation running large overall trade deficits year after year. Not only that, the US is India's number one trade partner, it is also India's largest source of trade surplus. Last year, India's trade surplus with the US was $24 billion. With China, India had a $52-billion trade deficit, its highest with any country. India fears that after the IT industry, it is now the turn of the manufacturing sector to brace itself for a possible jolt from the Trump regime. Washington DC has already sounded out to New Delhi that it would soon take steps to bridge the bilateral trade gap. India is also worried that countries like China will force higher export of commodities such as steel to India, following the US import restrictions.

Under such circumstances, India will have little choice but to impose much higher import duties to protect its own producers from international dumping. India has begun to legally examine the US move to secure its local industry. The protective trade action by the US, throwing a challenge to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its principles, should, in a way, embolden India to strongly pursue its emphasis on domestic manufacturing. Interestingly, Indian steel baron Sajjan Jindal supported the Trump action. Jindal wants India to impose a similar tariff barrier on steel to protect its industry. Significantly, President Trump's protectionist programme finally exposes the inbuilt fallacy of capitalism and free trade.