It was too good to be true. China’s economic growth powered by its exports sector delivered annual rates of real growth between 10% and 14% for years together in the 1980s and 1990s. Something the world watched with awe and admiration, as the Middle Kingdom surged to become the world’s second largest economy in GDP… Continue reading Are the Chickens of China’s State Capitalism Coming Home to Roost?
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
More than half of 2025 is over and we’re almost about to enter the last quarter of the calendar year. It’s time to assess which way the global economy is headed because the last time I wrote about it, it was just after the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings in the US in… Continue reading Which Way Go-eth The Global Economy?
A few days after Trump’s 50% reciprocal tariffs on India – including penalty for buying Russian oil and defence equipment - went into effect, the country announced its GDP numbers for Q1 of FY26, and did they surprise us all. It was almost like a rejoinder to Trump calling India “a dead economy”. But trade… Continue reading Why The Indian Economy Needn’t Be Tarrified
It’s been a long time coming. From Trump’s first term in office as US President, when he waged a tariff and trade war targeted primarily at China, the world has been in a tread-and-trade-carefully mode. Now that he is back for his second term, he is doubling down on his unfinished agenda, of taking the… Continue reading What the Post Trump-Tariff World Economic Order Looks Like
It’s been six months and more since India had been anticipating increased tariffs on exports to the US in Trump’s new term as US president, and yet there was no reporting on it in the Indian news media, except to keep harping on the fact that India could attract 26% reciprocal tariffs. The Indian government… Continue reading Bolstering India’s Independence in Tariff Negotiations with US
At a time when India seems to be scaling new heights at least in GDP rankings globally, there couldn’t have been a timelier book on India and its place in the world than The Golden Road. William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World attempts to tell the story of… Continue reading Dalrymple’s Golden Road Dazzles, But Lacks Depth
The Trump administration just announced a set of new reciprocal tariff rates for more countries and has set a new deadline of August 1, 2025 for these to take effect. It’s still early days, and it’s hard to tell their effect on consumer prices, on trade, and on consumption and economic growth, both in the… Continue reading Have Non-Tariff Ticket, Will Travel
While preparing a reading list for The Whistle Library monthly post exclusively for subscribers to The Whistle (my blog’s free monthly newsletter), I realized that this June and July have been months of intense international summitry around the world. From the G-7, NATO and SCO to the BRICS summit, an EU Summit, and the 4th… Continue reading Summer Summitry Amid Geopolitical Tensions
The idea for this blog post was prompted by a photograph that someone had shared on Blue Sky Social – where I have only just joined – of a McDonalds eatery being gobbled by a large medieval gate in some city in Estonia, I think. I shared the image post on LinkedIn and X as… Continue reading Why Cities Are Harbingers of Change
Peripatetic Perch 