Trump, Russia, Tariffs, EU ... now Poland

BTL the previous post, anon regales us with this quote relating to a pronouncement from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

Donald Trump has reportedly asked the EU to levy tariffs of up to 100% on India and China, in order to increase pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine.

Well, the Polish situation demands some kind of response; else the next "unplanned" wave of Gerberas will be over Finland and Estonia.  And I doubt NATO feels able to do much more than throw an aerial defensive screen around, say, Lviv - based firmly in Poland.  Economic measures are all that Europe is really up to at the moment.  The "coalition of the willing" is only looking at what it might do in the event of a ceasefire.

There is no doubt Russia is suffering economically just now (not to mention a growing shortage of gasoline and indeed water (sic) in the Donbas): and it might be made to suffer more.  But it can suffer more!  It's increasingly a war economy; and Russians are like that anyway (see this blog on many occasions).

Tense times.  Who needs the feeble distractions of Rayner and Mandelson?

ND  

Who fares best against Trump?

The Donald is, by his own estimation, a legendary deal-maker and negotiator.  Well, he does get (some) things done, and indeed sometimes gets his own way.  But how much of this is deal-making?  And how good are his deals?  His reputation in the New York real estate sector sucks is, errr, equivocal.

He's been in action quite a bit this year!  So there's something to score: and we can form an early view on his performance as a negotiator up against several prominent counterparties.  

vs China:  Trump is losing, hands down.  The Chinese are playing him like a fiddle, and he's steadily backing down on the tariff war, step by step.  Yet surely, by every standard of US foreign policy as espoused in the past decade by both his and the Democrat party, this is the only game that truly matters.  Sheesh... this really matters!  - did he think he could simply swat Xi aside one spring afternoon while he was mostly busy, errr, earning his Nobel Peace prize, annexing the whole North American land mass, remodelling the White House, peddling his crap merchandise, running feuds against everyone he's ever had a grievance against etc etc etc?

vs Russia:  jury still out, perhaps, but Putin won't be particularly disconcerted by their exchanges to date.  Relative to the extraordinary prior claims made by Trump ("peace in Ukraine in one day!"), and his huffing and puffing about "consequences", the current state of play is pretty demeaning for him.

vs Mexico and Canada:  given how things looked at the start of the whole tariffs round, OK-ish for M & C.  They've mostly stood their ground, and the world hasn't fallen down around their ears by any means.  Makes Trump's early rhetoric look pretty silly - and that's just on trade.  As for annexing Canada ... (I think we can hear the laughter from here - and Greenland probably isn't too worried just now, either.)  

vs India:  jury definitely still out, because India has options.  Trump has dealt his blow - but will he get any pleasure from what happens over the next months and years?  Not at all clear.  How clever is it to send Modi scuttling to Beijing, hmm?

vs Starmer:  surely, 2-1 to Trump.  Starmer has chosen to grovel, in return for some relative 'gains' (negatively defined, which is the only thing we can say) when compared to the EC, see below.  But it has suited Trump to give a little pat on the head to the biggest arse-licker, just pour encourager les autres.

vs the EC:  a seriously bad result for the EU, courtesy of the unelected EC which holds much of Europe's fate in their hands.  Feeble stuff.  A bit of a surprise, given how comprehensively the EC wiped the floor with Cameron and May.  But from this distance, that probably tells us more about them than it does about the EC.

vs Iran:  personally, I can't call this one yet.  Need to keep it in view: could tell us quite a lot.

Crazy man, crazy times.

ND

Mohdi does it, could Boris?

India's Prime Minister is at many things to many people. One part Hindu Nationalist and another economic reformer. His personal life is somewhat strange and yet accepted.
A difficult man overall. His visit to the UK though is very well thought out in political terms. Indian Prime Ministers get a lot of stick for spending money on overseas adventures. Imagine if in the UK we had the real poverty that exists in India, the left would be indignant of the Government spending even a penny on excess. Lest we not forget, the Indian communist party actually runds states in Eastern India too.

So to counter this, Mr Mohdi, who has a large entourage of acolytes, hit upon a good wheeze. He is addressing tomorrow night Wembley stadium where 60,000 tickets have been sold and this will pay for both his trip and also the coffers of his BJP party. So he combines fundraising and cutting Government expenditure all in one go.

Perhaps after all this quality would be something we could expect if Boris Johnson ever became Prime Minister; he could write columns in foreign newspapers, appear on their comedy programmes and charge of a few after dinner speeches. Certainly it would be an innovative way to reduce spending by the Foreign Office.

Aid, dependency and illusory goodwill

The above map shows the GDP distribution in Africa in 2012. The darker the colour, the richer the country relatively. Africa is still the poorest continent by some distance so even the darker shaded countries are not exactly doing well on a global scale.

The UK's decision to end aid to South Africa looks sensible on this view. South Africa is clearly a wealthy country by African Standards and despite many claims to the contrary, the economy has not collapsed since the end of apartheid and instead has shown modest growth; the major downside is unemployment at 23% which is both high and hard to bring down. South Africa is hardly alone in the world though at struggling to provide jobs when the population growth is 1% a year.

South Africa has reacted saying that it wants aid, this is a bad sign of a kleptocracy however that sees all foreign money as adding to the purse into which hands can be dipped. Compare and contrast the South African response today:

This is such a major decision with far reaching implications on the projects that are currently running and it is tantamount to redefining our relationship.


Ordinarily, the UK government should have informed the government of South Africa through official diplomatic channels of their intentions and allowed for proper consultations to take place, and the modalities of the announcement agreed on.

with responses printed in the Guardian to the withdrawal of aid from India:

Indian experts from across the political spectrum welcomed the aid move. Surjit S Bhalla, a Delhi-based consultant and former World Bank economist, said the British decision was "enlightened". "I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference. The whole concept of aid is very old and not necessarily relevant for modern times. These programmes were constructed when India and emerging nations were very poor," he said.
Instead, Bhalla said, investment should be largely focused on technical assistance in key areas such as sanitation or solar power in villages currently without electricity. The Indian government already ran a range of vast and often very wasteful welfare programmes. Compared with government expenditure on subsidised gas, for example, the British contribution of £280m annually was minimal, Bhalla said.
Dunu Roy, of the respected Hazards Centre, which supplies research to Indian NGOs, said his reaction to the news was "good riddance". "All aid was tied up with conditionalities so hopefully now Indians will have a better chance of doing what they want," he told the Guardian.
Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru university, New Delhi, said she did not think too many people would notice the end of British aid. "It is not that there are no minor successes, but in general the nature of the spending has not been such that it will really be missed. It had a tendency to follow the latest development fashion. So it was privatisation, then microcredit and now conditional cash transfers. It made little positive difference."

Grown up countries do not even want aid. This is before even mentioning a great article on the BBC this morning which discusses the rise of orphanages in Cambodia to meet the demands of 'volunteer' tourists.

It is such a difficult moral subject Aid, that I do wonder why it is such a lodestar of the current government.  There is much to be said for a more realpolitik approach to aid, at least we can see some of that now with the big recipients being Afghanistan and Pakistan.