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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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A market that negotiates as a block, represents its buying power and influence as a block. The EU exists for a reason. Global consumerism means that powerful developed countries rely on access to big market blocks like India to keep their profits high.

That doesn't really ring true. India is a net importer, but not from western countries, and many western countries are also net importers.

India is effectively asking the global-south to present as a more unified negotiating block, that allows for more favorable terms due to collective bargaining.

Which is not realistic because they don't share common economic interests. The Western world contains both importers (the US and UK) and exporters (Germany, the Netherlands), while the 'global South' does the same.

The real negotiation here is : India closing itself off and accepting a QOL hit, while lost sales hurt the exporting 1st world's industries.

Indians are not splurging on American movies and European wine. India mostly imports important economic inputs - machinery, energy, raw materials and fertilizer. Protecting domestic markets from foreign competition can be advantageous in some cases, but it's not really clear what the goal would be. There's no point in cutting off oil imports if your country can't produce it's own oil.