Thread: India Slams US Global Hegemony By Scuttling Global Trade Deal, Puts Future Of WTO In

India Slams US Global Hegemony By Scuttling Global Trade Deal, Puts Future Of WTO In Doubt

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/01/2014 15:44 -0400

Yesterday we reported that with the Russia-China axis firmly secured, the scramble was on to assure the alliance of that last, and critical, Eurasian powerhouse: India. It was here that Russia had taken the first symbolic step when earlier in the week its central bank announced it had started negotiations to use national currencies in settlements, a process which would culminate with the elimination of the US currency from bilateral settlements.
Russia was not the first nation to assess the key significance of India in concluding perhaps the most important geopolitical axis of the 21st century - we reported that Japan, scrambling to find a natural counterbalance to China with which its relations have regressed back to World War II levels, was also hot and heavy in courting India. “The Japanese are facing huge political problems in China,” said Kondapalli in a phone interview. “So Japanese companies are now looking to shift to other countries. They’re looking at India.”
Of course, for India the problem with a Japanese alliance is that it would also by implication involve the US, the country which has become insolvent and demographically imploding Japan's backer of last and only resort, and thus burn its bridges with both Russia and China. A question emerged: would India embrace the US/Japan axis while foregoing its natural Developing Market, and BRICS, allies, Russia and China.
We now have a clear answer and it is a resounding no, because in what was the latest slap on the face of now crashing on all sides US global hegemony, earlier today India refused to sign a critical global trade dea. Specifically, India's unresolved demands led to the collapse of the first major global trade reform pact in two decades. WTO ministers had already agreed the global reform of customs procedures known as "trade facilitation" in Bali, Indonesia, last December, but were unable to overcome last minute Indian objections and get it into the WTO rule book by a July 31 deadline.
WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo told trade diplomats in Geneva, just two hours before the final deadline for a deal lapsed at midnight that "we have not been able to find a solution that would allow us to bridge that gap."
Reuters reports that most diplomats had expected the pact to be rubber-stamped this week, marking a unique success in the WTO's 19-year history which, according to some estimates, would add $1 trillion and 21 million jobs to the world economy.
Turns out India was happy to disappoint the globalists: the diplomats were shocked when India unveiled its veto and the eleventh-hour failure drew strong criticism, as well as rumblings about the future of the organisation and the multilateral system it underpins.

"Australia is deeply disappointed that it has not been possible to meet the deadline. This failure is a great blow to the confidence revived in Bali that the WTO can deliver negotiated outcomes," Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said on Friday. "There are no winners from this outcome – least of all those in developing countries which would see the biggest gains."

Shockingly, and without any warning, India's stubborn refusal to comply with US demands, may have crushed the WTO as a conduit for international trade, and landed a knockout punch when it comes to future relentless globallization which as is well known over the past 50 or so years, has benefited the US first and foremost.
Broke, debt-monetizing Japan, which as noted previously, was eager to become BFFs with India was amazed by the rebuttal: "A Japanese official familiar with the situation said that while Tokyo reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining and strengthening the multilateral trade system, it was frustrated that such a small group of countries had stymied the overwhelming consensus. "The future of the Doha Round including the Bali package is unclear at this stage," he said."
Others went as far as suggesting the expulsion of India:

Some nations, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, Japan and Norway, have already discussed a plan to exclude India from the agreement and push ahead, officials involved in the talks said.

However, such a move would clearly be an indication that the great globalization experiment is coming to an end: "New Zealand Minister of Overseas Trade, Tim Groser, told Reuters there had been "too much drama" surrounding the negotiations and added that any talk of excluding India was "naive" and counterproductive. "India is the second biggest country by population, a vital part of the world economy and will become even more important. The idea of excluding India is ridiculous." ... "I don't want to be too critical of the Indians. We have to try and pull this together and at the end of the day putting India into a box would not be productive," he added.
And yes, the death of the WTO is already being casually tossed around as a distinct possibility:

Still, the failure of the agreement should signal a move away from monolithic single undertaking agreements that have defined the body for decades, Peter Gallagher, an expert on free trade and the WTO at the University of Adelaide, told Reuters.

"I think it's certainly premature to speak about the death of the WTO. I hope we've got to the point where a little bit more realism is going to enter into the negotiating procedures," he said.

But the one country that was most traumatized, was the one that has never before been used to getting a no answer by some "dingy developing world backwater": the United States, and the person most humiliated, who else but John Kerry.
"U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday that India's refusal to sign a global trade deal sent the wrong signal, and he urged New Delhi to work to resolve the row as soon as possible." "Failure to sign the Trade Facilitation Agreement sent a confusing signal and undermined the very image Prime Minister Modi is trying to send about India," a U.S. State Department official told reporters after Kerry's meeting with Modi.
Wrong signal for John Kerry perhaps, who is now beyond the world's "diplomatic" laughing stock and the man who together with Hillary Clinton (and the US president) has made a complete mockery of US global influence in the past 5 years. But just the right signal for China and of course, Russia.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...ture-wto-doubt

Russia And India Begin Negotations To Use National Currencies In Settlements, Bypassing Dollar

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/31/2014 11:44 -0400

Over the past 6 months, there has been much talk about the strategic proximity between Russia and China, made even more proximal following the "holy grail" gas deal announced in May which would not have happened on such an accelerated time frame had it not been for US escalation in Ukraine.
And yet little has been said about that other just as crucial for the "new BRIC-centric world order" relationship, that between Russia and India. That is about to change when yesterday the Russian central bank announced that having been increasingly shunned by the west, Russia discussed cooperation with Reserve Bank of India Executive Director Shrikant Padmanabhan. The punchline: India agreed to create a task group to work out a mechanism for using national currencies in settlements. And so another major bilateral arrangement is set up that completely bypasses the dollar.
From the Russian Central Bank:

First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation KV Yudaeva and Executive Director of the Reserve Bank of India G. Padmanabhan at the twentieth meeting of the Subgroup on banking and financial issues of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on trade-economic, scientific-technical and cultural cooperation discussed the current state and prospects of cooperation between banks.

The meeting was attended by representatives of central banks, ministries and agencies, credit organizations in Russia and India.

During the meeting dealt with the problems faced by the branches and subsidiaries of banks in the two countries and ways of addressing these problems.

As a priority area discussed the use of national currencies in mutual settlements. Given the urgency of the issue and the interest of commercial structures of the two countries, the meeting decided to establish a working group to develop a mechanism for the use of national currencies in mutual settlements. It will consist of representatives of banks and, if necessary, the ministries and departments of the two countries to coordinate its activities will be central banks of Russia and India.

What is curious is that now that China has sided firmly with Russia when it comes to geopolitical strategy (not least when it comes to recent development surrounding the downing of flight MH-17, recall "China Blasts "One-Sided Western Rush To Judge Russia" Over MH17"), and thus Russia behind China when it comes to claims by the world's most populous nation in its territorial dispute with Japan, Japan too is scrambling to secure a major ally in Asia, and it too is trying desperately to get on India's good side.
Bloomberg reports that "Japan’s Sasebo naval base this month saw unusual variety in vessel traffic that’s typically dominated by Japanese and U.S. warships. An Indian frigate and destroyer docked en route to joint exercises in the western Pacific."

The INS Shivalik and INS Ranvijay’s appearance at the port near Nagasaki showed Japan’s interest in developing ties with the South Asian nation as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government faces deepening tensions with China. Japan for the third time joined the U.S. and India in the annual “Malabar” drills that usually are held in the Bay of Bengal.

With Abe loosening limits on his nation’s military, the exercises that conclude today showcase Japan’s expanding naval profile as China pushes maritime claims in disputed areas of the East and South China Seas. For newly installed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japan’s attention adds to that of China itself, in an opportunity to expand his own country’s sway.

Japan’s involvement in Malabar underscores its interest in helping secure its trade routes to Europe and the Middle East. The Indian Ocean is “arguably the world’s most important trading crossroads,” according to the Henry L. Stimson Center, a foreign policy research group in Washington. It carries about 80 percent of the world’s seaborne oil, mostly headed to China and Japan.

...

“The Japanese are facing huge political problems in China,” said Kondapalli in a phone interview. “So Japanese companies are now looking to shift to other countries. They’re looking at India.”

So on one hand Japan is rushing to extend a much needed olive branch by the "insolvent western alliance + Japan" to India; on the other Russia is preparing to transact bilterally with India in a way that bypasses the dollar.
Which means that just as Germany has become the fulcrum and most strategic veriable in Europe (more on this shortly) whose future allegiance to Russia or the US may determine the fate of Europe, so suddenly India is now the great Asian wildcard.
Perhaps a very important hint of which way India is headed came moments ago from Reuters, which said that India has raised the issue of U.S. surveillance activities in the South Asian nation with Secretary of State John Kerry, the foreign minister said on Thursday. "Yes, I raised this issue (U.S. snooping) with Secretary John Kerry ... I have also conveyed to him that this act on the part of U.S. authorities is completely unacceptable to us," Sushma Swaraj said at a joint news conference in New Delhi. In response, Kerry said: "We (the United States) fully respect and understand the feelings expressed by the minister."
Thank you Snowden for helping move the geopolitical tectonic plates that much faster.
Now let the real courting begin.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...-bypassing-dol

India Shocks World, Joins Russia Against Obama Regime

Posted by EU Times on Aug 1st, 2014 // No Comment



A new report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) circulating in the Kremlin states that India’s veto earlier today of a landmark World Trade Organization (WTO) treaty has “shocked the world” and could very well lead to the entire collapse of this Western led global organization that for past 66 years has, in essence, economically destroyed too many once free nations to count.
According to this report, India was forced to take a stand against the West who were attempting to force this sub-continent nation into starving hundreds-of-millions of its own citizens should this WTO treaty taken effect.
In a nutshell, according to press reports, India was facing extreme pressure, mostly from the Obama regime led West, for holding up the Trade Facilitation Agreement under the WTO. It did so because it wants to first settle the question of flexibility to buy and stock as much food as it wants from its farmers. This is important to ensure the implementation of its Food Security Act.
Current WTO rules cap subsidies to farmers at 10 percent of the total value of farm production based on 1986-88 prices. [Example: Wheat: 1986:$2.42 per bushel 2014: $5.93 per bushel]
India, however, had wanted the base of calculating food subsidies updated to current price levels, taking into account inflation and currency movements. Otherwise, the government would not be able to provide subsidized food to some 67 percent of its 1.2 billion people it wishes to cover under its food security law.
Obama regime spokesman, Secretary of State John Kerry, this MoFA report continues, had flown to India to pressure Prime Minister Narendra Modi into signing this treaty but was quickly rebuffed. After which the US then blamed India for the collapse of these talks and stated that by New Delhi taking a hard-line position, the future of the WTO is now on “uncertain ground”.
In a further Indian move against the Obama regime, this report says, the Bank of Russia and the Reserve Bank of India, this week, agreed to set up a working group to devise tools to use their national currencies in bilateral payments bypassing the US Dollar in a further blow to the West.
Important to note of these events, this report continues, is that India in being a member of the anti-Western economic alliance known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that last month signed an historic agreement to break the Obama regimes hegemony over the world by establishing their own monetary system.
Director Domenico Lombardi, an expert on the global economy from the Canadian think tank Center for International Governance Innovation’s (CIGI) global economy program, in commenting on the BRICS establishment of their New Development Bank (NDB) to counter the destructive policies of the Western-led World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) further stated:
“…one of the main sources of frustrations for the BRICS economies and of course for China in the first place, has “pushed the BRICS countries to come together to try to quash [Western] political power, try to leverage on their rising economic power and provide a political leverage to their rising economic power.”
The BRICS’ new financial institutions, it has been further warned, could also undermine US-EU global dominance as they have had unchallenged sway over the decision-making institutions of global financial governance for 70 years, and the last thing they want to see is competition.
So deadly serious have the US-EU become in trying to maintain their global economic hegemony, MoFA experts in this report say, one need look no further than Libya, where in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi planned to quit selling Libyan oil in US Dollars — demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold).
Within weeks of Gaddafi announcing his plan to replace the US Dollar, it should be remembered, his regime was attacked by a supposed popular uprising by what were described by the West as rag-tag revolutionaries who curiously announced the designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.
So absolutely astounding was it that these “rag tag” Libyan rebels were able to establish a central bank before they had even formed a government, even Robert Wenzel of the US Economic Policy Journal was forced to admit to CNBC, “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising.”
Wenzel in his CNBC interview further revealed that foreign powers may have a strong influence over the rebels and stated: “This suggests we have a bit more than a ragtag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences”.
Most critical to note in this report, however, is its warning that while the whole world is in the middle of a global currency war (i.e. a situation where nations all compete to devalue their currencies the most in order to boost exports), the Obama regime has now “set its sights” on Russia like it did in 2011 against Libya, and in 2003 against Iraq, and in 2000 against Iran…all nations that have sought to break away from the US Dollar.
Even Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff warned the West in 2010 that the last time there was a series of competitive currency devaluations … it ended in World War II.
Sadly, President Rousseff’s warning is being joined by some of the world’s top financial experts who warned this week that “World War III is coming”.
And with India now joining with Russia and China against the US and EU…it looks to be coming much sooner than later.

Source

http://www.eutimes.net/2014/08/india...-obama-regime/