dray
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That's what everyone says, including India. Yet their trade deficit to China keeps rising every year.
There is a simple reason for this. China has planned and built an entire national manufacturing base, in order to maximise the competitiveness of our industries.
And in the market economy, the most competitive gets the most orders. You don't get rewards for being a slacker.
Tariffs seem like an easy solution, except everyone knows what happens when you raise tariffs. The other side raises tariffs in return, it's Trade War 101. All sides lose, nobody gains.
You don't think India is handing us this massive trade deficit every year for fun do you? If they could have done something, they would have done it already. People have been talking about the trade deficit for decades now, the second they genuinely think it's a bad deal they will cut the trade off.
China has become world's largest outsourcing destination for manufacturing because of low cost of production, that was achieved through faster clearance in SEZs without any consideration for the environment, and its very large cheap labour force, that was often exploited by flouting every labour laws in the world. When China started this outsourcing business, it didn't have all the infrastructure that it has today, so don't tell me that China gets FDI for only it's infrastructure. Now that the labour cost and other expenses are increasing in China, it is becoming less and less attractive as an investment destination, many companies have started shifting their manufacturing from China, and it will only increase going forward in 5-10 years to a point where the outsourcing model won't remain sustainable.
Coming to USA, they are certainly considering to bring back some jobs to homeland, and reduce imports and outsourcing, so are European countries. India didn't have the kind of trade deficit 10-12 years ago, we were in fact became a net trade surplus country in 2004; the last year of previous BJP government. The current trade deficit will be eliminated in next 5-10 years, god times for China will not going to stay for long.
Tariffs seem like an easy solution, except everyone knows what happens when you raise tariffs. The other side raises tariffs in return, it's Trade War 101. All sides lose, nobody gains.
And needless to say, the beneficiary country of the trade deficit suffers most.