Showing 1 - 9 of 9
What Modi has figured out that Trump never has
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 21/03/2024
» Excitement and uncertainty used to accompany general elections in India. Polls swung back and forth, coalitions formed and reformed, analysts dissected policy platforms and assessed the prospects of hundreds of individual candidates. As India embarked on its 18th general election campaign on Tuesday, there is no electricity in the air. It is hard to find anyone who believes Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lose his bid for a third term in office.
US reign at World Bank must end now
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 08/02/2019
» In many ways, David Malpass, whom US President Donald Trump nominated to head the World Bank, is an unsurprising choice. He's a senior Treasury official overseeing international affairs. Plus, his background absolutely screams "Trump nominee": He isn't a woman (Indra Nooyi, formerly of PepsiCo Inc, was being considered). He is an outspoken critic of the institution he is now to head (recall Scott Pruitt's tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency). And he has a controversial Wall Street background (he was chief economist at the ill-fated Bear Stearns), as well as some embarrassing calls in his past (he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2007 insisting that the housing market couldn't pull down the broader economy).
Don't expect young to save centrism
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/05/2017
» At a victory rally for France's young new President Emmanuel Macron outside the Louvre last week, I was struck by the generational gap between the candidate and his most animated supporters.
An age of undiplomatic diplomacy
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 09/05/2017
» What happens when strongmen meet? We know that the world is slowly filling up with populist nationalists, from Manila to Washington. But how do they plan to deal with each other? Will they join forces against the sanctimonious, supra-national powers that dismay them all? Or will they compete, as erstwhile tough guys seem most comfortable doing?
India losing faith in free-trade deals
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 11/04/2017
» Until fairly recently, it looked like two massive new agreements would compete to define the future of world trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, backed by the US, would try to move the global trade architecture toward new norms, with harmonised regulations at its centre. Meanwhile, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, backed by China, would drastically reduce remaining tariffs across a swathe of Asia and push the existing model of trade and manufacturing as far as it could go.
Modi is a different nationalist to Putin or Trump
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 06/04/2017
» Over the past year, Russia's Vladimir Putin has emerged as the ideological patron of a certain brand of conservatism worldwide. Politicians from France's Marine Le Pen, to Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, to Donald Trump appear drawn to Mr Putin's vision of a world marked by weaker transnational power blocs, fewer meddlesome liberals and a harder line against radical Islam.
Trump can't kill the TPP
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 27/01/2017
» When President Donald Trump withdrew US support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday, he made it harder for American companies to compete. In the name of US labour, he compromised the interests of the American worker, for the TPP would've forced labour standards onto the trade agenda for the first time in history. Mr Trump turned his back on America's allies and handed China a giant strategic victory. What he didn't do was kill what the TPP stands for.
In the Trump era, Asia must unite
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 24/01/2017
» Every new occupant of the White House has his -- still, unfortunately, "his" -- way of looking at the world. America's allies, friends and rivals have always adjusted to these shifts in worldview. But so far they've been relatively straightforward. Some presidents have sought to extend democratic values, others to fight grand strategic battles. The last swore not to "do stupid stuff". Adjusting to President Donald Trump won't be that easy.
Indian protectionism isn't patriotic
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 15/12/2016
» Samuel Johnson got it wrong: Patriotism is the last refuge of the unprofitable. The Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart Online Services Pvt lost 23 billion rupees (about 12.1 billion baht) last year, and so its co-founder and executive chairman, Sachin Bansal, has suddenly morphed into a great champion of local companies. "We need to take a more India-centric approach" to regulation, he told a Bengaluru audience last week, citing Donald Trump approvingly.