The Chinese Version of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Manufacturing has been the mainstay of the Chinese economy and a driver of its expansion. This was the sector that helped China rise to the level of being the world’s second biggest economy today. This impressive evolution was based on a large workforce, low wages and government support, as well as radical …

Implications for the region On July 30, the United States Department of Commerce granted the Strategic Trade Authorisation-1 (STA-1) status to India, making it the world’s 37th and Asia’s only third country – after Japan and South Korea – and the only South Asian country to get this status. The biggest gain for India in this is the relaxation in …

Trade wars have finally begun. After exchanging several threats over the last few months, both the United States and China have imposed a tariff of 25% on imports worth $34 billion. This marks the official beginning of what China dubs as “the biggest trade war in economic history”. While this trade war is far from the biggest the world has …

A Concert for Russia and the World During the past decade and a half, the Middle East has got an increasingly important position in international relations. Developments taking place in this region at present have greater geopolitical and economic consequences for the rest of the world than in the Cold War era. This is not primarily due to the destabilizing …

Emergence of a new norm that justifies the use of force When Donald Trump ordered air strikes against Syria in April 2017, it was the first – and to date only – action of his administration that attracted widespread support, garnering positive responses even from critics. But, this praise and support for Trump was all the more surprising especially because …

Does expulsion of diplomats threaten the world peace? “I think we are coming to a situation that is similar, to a large extent, to what we lived during the Cold War … I am very concerned about the lack of mechanisms to defuse tensions, such as special channels for information-sharing between Washington and Moscow, which were dismantled with the end …

The US returns with a dangerous new edge “We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we are engaged in today, but great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of US national security.” — US Defense Secretary James Mattis After focusing on the fight against terrorism for more than a decade and a half, the …

The Threat of Nuclear Annihilation Since the day Donald J. Trump entered the White House, one thing has been established with absolute veracity: he is a consummate liar. He has told numerous lies to the world as well as to the American people. The frequence of his lies can be assessed from a report published by the Washington Post recently …

The agreement to cut oil production has finally achieved its objective as the oil prices have shot up to $60 per barrel. The success in jacking up the prices is built largely on Saudi Arabia’s over-compliance and Russia’s recent compliance to agreed production cuts. Although historical precedents indicate that Russia has preferred a free ride on OPEC production cuts, recent …

Comparative advantage is the main force driving international trade: countries open to trade would export what they are comparatively “good” at producing, and import what they are comparatively “bad” at producing. “Good” and “bad” refer to production costs, which, in competitive markets, define prices to consumers. Economists argue that international trade makes countries, in the aggregate, better off; through imports, …