sree

freerange said:

This is restraint of trade pure and simple. While one can argue that India is a developing nation and needs the flexibility to grow their own businesses / industries, the reality is that India is being allowed to steal our jobs by the 10's of thousands through the illegal use and abuse of the H1-B visa program where Indian workers are being imported into the US and directly replacing American workers. This is happening on a massive scale through huge Indian outsourcing companies. At the same time, major American companies have been shipping 100's of 1,000's of jobs to India to these same outsourcing companies. It's time to put an end to these practices as India is not interested in a level playing field.

Well, the indian companies (only indian, not american) are charged $4000 extra per H1B visa as compared to non-indian companies. Is that a level playing field?

There is a cap of 65,000 H1B visas per year, and these visas are for a period of 6 years only. Considering the US has like 400million people I think you can handle a few thousand indians?

The whole of the US farming sector exists primarily due to subsidies and non-level playing field (considering farm exports would be the major chunck for predominantly farming countries like India, is that a level playing field?)

Most of India's money is spent on importing oil (a resource they don't have), and unlike the US they have historically been friends with Iran and got cheap oil from them. But due to the US imposed sanctions, they have had to buy costly oil from US companies operating out of saudi. Hmm. Very level playing field, that is?

The U.S. government mandates that Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients in drugs should be made locally. Guess which country has one of the largest pharmaceutical industry and gets affected? India of course. Level playing field anyone?

It is very simple, US or India or any other country, they try to protect the areas of business where they can't compete, and are open where they can. All International trading orgs like WTO have caveats in them to allow countries to do this. 

latifbp said:

anantksundaram said:

Honestly, I am failing to see why this spat about used phones such a big deal on all sides. Really, do we think that this is somehow the centerpiece of Apple's long term entry and growth strategy into the seventh largest -- and one of the fastest growing -- economies in the world?

It's a start to get these cheapskates invested into Apple's sticky ecosystem.

Why do you even these "cheapskates", go sell to people who are not. Nobody is begging for iPhones, trust me.

anantksundaram said:

digitalclips said:

I have no idea and am just asking.  Does Europe and the USA have the same or similar reciprocal conditions with Indian products in our trade deals?

No. One of the key principles of international trade rules and laws (most of which the US is signatory to, as is India) is the 'most-favored nation' clause: it says that countries cannot discrimate among their trading partners. If you grant or take away a special favor to someone, you must do it to all. 

(Add: As an aside, this is why the granting of MFN to China some years ago was such a big deal). 

That is a little too simplistic, since there are a bunch of regional treaties like NAFTA and the EU that act against the interests of countries like India. Also, the WTO/IMF itself is mostly bullied by the big boys (US/EU and now china) and so in general these policies are biased against countries like india.

jdgaz said:

So no Tiffany Stores in India? No Ralph Loren? No Coach? No Starbucks? No single brand outlet stores? Very strange rules.

India is a big producer of coffee beans, so yes there is starbucks and they source their beans from india. A lot of the clothing, including stuff available in the US, is actually made in india and bangladesh. So, all the clothing brands are present.

Most of the chinese, korean, japanese electronics brands (Sony/LG/Samsung/Phillips/Hitachi/Sansui etc.) have single stores in india. So, sourcing 30% locally must not be as big a problem as it is being made out to be. Most of these companies (microsoft/google/samsung/IBM/HP etc.) atleast have software development centers here, so that must contribute some part to the local sourcing too.

These rules exist since Indian economy started a transition from a protected-socialist economy to a capitalist one pretty late (1991). Such drastic transition needed to be slow, and local industry needed to be given time and space to try and compete. Many industries have regularly been freed every 2-3 years, and single-brand retail will be too one day when the time is right.