I am so sad now, ffs there was a golden opportunity for India to do much better than others
All wasted
Fking stupid Trump, you had one job
China need not trade with you directly anyway, so why bother with this BS at all
This is still a net zero for us in reality and just changing trajectories, not changing progress. Think about it, if USA did go through all the tariffs they said they would, they would definitely go into recession for this year, if not longer. Because when you are goods importer and you slap tariffs on EVERYONE, you only further tank your spending power in the short term.
Whether it works out for you in the long term ( industry returning/competition crushed, trade-imbalance sorted), there will always be short term pain, in my non-professional eye ( i am not economy or finance guy, i am tech guy).
What this means, to me, is that if tarrifs came on like the last plan, India's IT sector exports die off, but we replace our IT sector service export with manufacturing sector goods export, as we draw more manufacturing from favourable net tariff plan.
But that is still immense short term pain for Indian economy, because the IT service sector export value would go to less than half of what it is now by end of the year, but we wont be able to create manufacturing and the production boost from tariffs for another 2-3 years, as we dont have genie to snap finger and make logistics node + factory+port all in a day.
What this means, assuming Trump doesnt do another about-face, is that things for India go back to 2024 for economy - we are still service sector exporters to usa, we still compete with other ASEAN tigers or other manufacturing hubs in the world like before, only difference is we end up closing the gap slightly to Chinese manufacturing value.
My 'hunch' is that Trump wants manufacturing to leave China and go elsewhere/come back to USA but he cant just crash the system completely, because there is a 'tide over' gap of 2-3 years needed to create logistics and industrial capacity elsewhere.
So trump is walking the middle ground in this IMO - he isnt KO-ing imports from everywhere, is gonna allow China to re-route exports through other countries at a hit to China but he is creating enough market uncertainty that Western conglomerates will see China as too volatile and risky an investment long term and start creating alternate supply chain capacities elsewhere.
The economics gurus feel free to correct me, but i think this is what is happening, assuming Trump is competent and this isnt just an elaborae ruse for the world's bigges short-seller/insider-trader program.
economictimes.indiatimes.com
