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EU tariffs on Chinese EV

In the United States the tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles are 100%. It is now the European Union’s turn to follow in American footsteps. The EU is about to impose a 45% tax on Chinese electric vehicles, which raises a few uneasy observations.

One. Where has the ideology of free market economy gone? One might rather think that the West is all about market competition. The manufacturer of goods or provider of services who can sell better and cheaper products wins the market. It turns out that this rule is binding only so long as the market is dominated by “us”, not by “them”.

Two. Of course, neither the United States nor the European Union violate their own principles of free market competition! Far from it! What they are currently doing is that they fight unhealthy competition. Understood? You know the usual story that is spun by the commissioners: the tariffs are only imposed because the Chinese support their manufacturers while we do not. How can anybody prove or disprove this claim? How can anybody know whether the Chinese support their manufacturers while Europe does not support its? The argument resembles the one about silencing or suppressing free speech in social media and elsewhere. It is not that the European Union is introducing censorship; rather, the EU combats misinformation and disinformation.

Three. The EU commissioners, who are obsessed with green – loop – sustainable economy would like – as soon as possible – to see on the roads only vehicles powered by electricity. As it is, “Chinese-built electric cars jumped from 3.9% of the EV market in 2020 to 25% by September 2023” (AP), which means that the EU’s green policy has economically backfired. Most likely, the EU commissioners once cherished hopes that European electric vehicles would dominate not only the European market but also markets outside the Old Continent. The Americans must have thought the same. What a bitter disappointment!

Four. If it is true that Chinese EVs are government-subsidized, why cannot the European Union subsidize its own EV manufacturers? Is it because Brussels has funnelled all the available resources to sabre-rattling in Ukraine and the millions of imported aliens?

Five. It also turns out that tariffs are after all good for particular economies. Why, then, have they been removed between European countries – EU members? If a superstate like the EU needs the tariffs – more, if the economic superpower like the United States needs the tariffs – why should a small economy like that of Hungary or Portugal, Finland or Croatia do away with them? Things just don’t add up. It turns out that neither Hungary nor Portugal, neither Finland nor Croatia are afraid of economic competition coming from such giants as Germany or France, the United Kingdom or Italy, but the aggregate of these four countries along with their many dependencies is scared out of its wits when it comes to Chinese competition. Hm…

Six. The EU commissioners dream about saving the whole planet from poverty, discrimination and ecological catastrophe, which is why they import millions of non-Europeans and de-industrialize their countries. Why then do the EU commissioners not want to help the billion of Chinese people by buying their products and why do the EU commissioners not want to accelerate the process of transitioning to green economy with the aid of China’s EVs? These are, after all, the two noblest goals of the managers of the world! A weird thought springs to mind: is still profit more important than all that blah-blah about helping Third World people and saving the planet?

As usual, the Western managers of the world fall into their own snares and say mutually exclusive or contradictory things in the same breath. That’s nothing out of the usual. An attentive observer has had time enough to get accustomed to it while EU blind supporters will neither notice these inconsistencies nor, noticing them, will they ever hold them against their beloved EU.

Inside a Chinese EV

Putin has lost this war

It is for some time now that Western politicians have been keeping saying that Putin has lost the war in Ukraine. As proof for that they quote the numerous sanctions imposed on Russia and the fact that Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. They may also add that the whole international community has condemned Russia. Has Putin really lost this war?

① In 2014 Russia incorporated Crimea – in other words, Ukraine, the West’s darling, has lost it;

② since 2022 Russia has been occupying almost the whole territory of the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia; it is not Ukraine that occupies Russian territories;

③ the popularity of Vladimir Putin in Russia is at an all-time high, even the Western media admit it;

④ the Russian nation is consolidated like never before for the last few decades;

⑤ Russia and China are politically and economically closer and closer and are more and more effectively opposing the West;

⑥ Belarus, which tried to have friendly relations with all its neighbours, has been compelled to unite with Russia as much as possible;

⑦ Russian tactical nuclear weapons have been moved to Belarus, i.e. closer to the borders of NATO states;

⑧ most of the international community have not joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia;

⑨ sanctions have backfired and inflicted damage on the Western countries;

⑩ Ukraine, the West’s dependency, has had its economy ruined while its population has been decimated due to war losses and mass emigration.

Putin has already lost this war? Really? Let us view the above from a different vantage point:

① in 2014 the West lost Crimea, a prospective area for Western military presence and the resultant control over the Black Sea;

② since 2022 Ukraine (i.e. the West) has lost control over the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia;

③ the international, political prestige of Western leaders due to their political ineffectiveness in Ukraine is waning;

④ the Western governments and nations are split over the issue of the war in Ukraine;

⑤ Iran and North Korea have gained powerful protectors in Russia and China, while Turkey is an unreliable ally of the West ;

⑥ Belarus has ultimately and probably irrevocably been lost for the West;

⑦ the utility of the West’s weaponry has proved not so effective in the Ukrainian battlefield as it has been thought;

⑧ the international community is backing away from the dollar and joining or wishing to join BRICS, where Russia and China call the shots;

⑨ Russian gas and oil has found recipients in no time, and these are China and India to name the two biggest customers, while Russian uranium is still being provided for American power plants, generating revenue for Moscow;

⑩ Ukraine’s political, economic and demographic future is dismal to say the least.

The West may join Austria and Switzerland to NATO to prove that Putin has lost this war, but has he? Napoleon was in Moscow and Hitler was on the Volga (take a map to see how deep inside Russia the river flows!) and in the Caucasus, and for all that they both lost to Russia. Today the West has not even made an appreciable incursion into Russian territory, and still its leaders keep saying that Putin has already lost this war. How mendacious one can be?

Why China cannot – must not – let go of Tibet

China is a multinational country. Its ethnic minorities are not numerous at all, especially in comparison with the enormous number of the people who are collectively known as Chinese. Still, some of the minorities occupy very large territories, and these are Mongols, Uyghurs and Tibetans. Their respective territories make a crescent from the north (Mongols) to the west (Uyghurs), and the south (Tibetans). Compare with a similar crescent round the Western part of Russia: the Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Why can’t China let go of the three alien nations and allow them to have their independent countries rather than being autonomous parts of the Chinese state? The answer is simple and anyone who has followed the political events in the last thirty years knows it. It is not without a reason that we compared the political crescent adjacent to China with the similar one adjacent to Russia. If today China withdrew from the three regions and recognized their sovereignty, no later than tomorrow the United States would join the three independent countries to a kind of NATO or AUKUS. and would take control over them and use them against China. That’s precisely what has happened with the Baltic States and Ukraine; that’s precisely what could have happened with Belarus and may still happen.

That is the reason why big states are compelled to enlarge their territories and to institute dependent states around them. That’s how big states ensure their safety and peace on their borders. It was not without a reason that the USSR (effectively Russia) was made up of several republics and had a whole political bloc of dependent countries in Central Europe. Michail Gorbachev, the USSR’s last head of state, naively thought that neither these dependent countries nor the whole of the Soviet Union were necessary for the safety of Russia, for peace in all Soviet republics and the dependent countries. History – or rather the United States – has proved him dead wrong.

If yesterday China had followed in the footsteps of the USSR, it would have war either close to its borders or inside the country. Conversely, if yesterday the Soviet Union had not let go of all the dependent states and had not disintegrated, today it might be following China’s path of development, implementing capitalism under the guidance of its communist party.

The leaders of the USSR may have thought that Central European states would feel at least a modicum of gratefulness for being peacefully released from the Soviet grip. What is the reality? The reality is that almost on the following day former Soviet dependencies joined a military alliance hostile to Russia, and are now – with the exception of Hungary – rabidly anti-Russian. The leaders of China need not harbor the same naive expectations. They can take it for granted that Mongols, Uyghurs, and Tibetans, emancipated by Beijing, would immediately turn into China’s rabid adversaries. Such are tough rules of history: if you do not expand, you begin to shrink; if you do not elbow your way through life, you soon become downtrodden.

From Christ, God-made-man, to Hanuman, half-man, half-ape

Christianity is receding from the world of the white man. Christianity has been the religion of the white man. Barely no longer so. Christianity is as good as dead in most of the Western Europe; it is very much fragmented into thousands of sects in the United States; former Christians, having abandoned the creed of their forefathers are looking for spirituality to other faiths. The ever growing influx of immigrants who are invited by Western governments and settled in Europe and North America contributes to the eradication of Christianity. Immigrants, unlike their hosts, generally cling to their beliefs.

You may be a believing Christian, a nominal Christian or an atheist. If, however, you are of Caucasian descent, you have been imbued with Christian culture and your ancestors were Christians. This being so, you will admit that Christianity was the soul of the white race, its culture, its heritage, its spirit. For centuries Europeans conquering and settling other continents tried to Christianize the peoples inhabiting them and certainly did not convert to the faiths of India or Africa are the Americas. Quite the contrary was true: they regarded the deities other than the Christian God as demons that could barely be tolerated. Also Germanic and Slavic gods were mere demons: Christian missionaries used to mercilessly burn them without regard for their artistic value. Also, when Christianity became the dominant religion in the ancient world, all the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome had to go. Irrevocably. There was no room for religious diversity. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, was the order of the day. Notice that European expansion went hand in hand with the expansion of Christianity. Both Americas have been Christianized and much of Africa. It was Asia that resisted conversion to Christianity, which was caused by a higher development of the continent’s civilization. Even so, Christians settling in India or China or Indochina did not as a rule become followers of Buddhism, Confucianism or the Hindu religion.

Half-man, half-ape or Hanuman

As said above, it is no longer so. Europeans have lost their spirit, their backbone and have become – at most – indifferent to their spiritual heritage or – for the time being in few isolated cases – quite hostile to it. Even the Pope has made statements on a few occasions to the tune of all religions being equal and all of them leading their believers to God and salvation.

No wonder then that post-Christians begin to respect the principles of other faiths in everyday life. Where there are Muslim communities pork is not served and nobody raises any objections the the Ramadan practices. More and more churches are turned into mosques and there are converts to Islam among Europeans. Few, as yet.

No wonder then that the children of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are not raised as Christians because their mother is Jewish. Just think of it: when in the 19th century the United Kingdom had Jewish Benjamin Disraeli as Prime Minister, he first needed to be Christian. Such requirements are not binding any more. Today, if you want to be a country’s prime minister, president or minister, you need to believe in the man-made climate change, in the eternal guilt of the white man in his relations with other races, in the biological equality of all races, in the benefits of mass immigration, in green economy, and in the fact that Putin is one of the avatars of Satan.

No wonder then that although Donald Trump is a nominal Christian, his daughter Ivanka has converted to Judaism upon marrying Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, and raises their children in the Jewish faith. No wonder that Usha Vance, wife of JD Vance, Donald Trump’s co-runner for presidency, is a practising Hindu, extending the Hindu blessings to political rallies of support for her husband. No wonder then that recently the ever growing community of immigrants from India have had a huge monument to Hanuman, an Indian deity, put up in Texas. The statue is approximately 30 metres tall, which makes it the third tallest in the United States. An unthinkable event twenty years back.

If you say that all of the above is a manifestation of tolerance and that tolerance is a kind of higher level of the development of humanity, then think again. There is no tolerance. Try questioning such deities as man-made climate change, the equality of human races, diversity, benefits of mass immigration, or the right of homosexuals to show off their homosexuality and you will be ostracised, condemned and socially outlawed in no time. So, the acceptance of Judaism and the Hindu religion is no manifestations of tolerance; rather, it is a manifestation of the shift of the values. What was cherished by European ancestors has been dethroned, abandoned, ridiculed. Other values have been accepted and other values are worshipped. It is not that we have rid our European languages of the notion of heretics, heresies, burnings at the stake, anathema or the inquisition. Yes, we have stopped using those terms in reference to present-day phenomena and procedures. Today we use such terms as bigot, racist, homophobe, xenophobe, far-right, white supremacist, and so on. Today’s heretic is known as a bigot or a far-right activist, today’s inquisition are the media, and today’s burning at the state is ostracism, blacklisting, marginalization, removal from social networks and the like.

Think of it. Yesterday a statue of Hanuman, half-man, half-ape would have been hacked to pieces by the Spanish conquistadors or the missionaries of Charlemagne. Today, the pope himself sets a pattern to be followed by Christians and post-Christians by enthroning the Pachamama – a south American deity – in the Vatican. If the top Christian does not see a demon in an alien deity, if the top Christian disregards the thou-shalt-no-have-other-gods-before-me commandment, the very first! one of the Ten, then why should Texan authorities object to giving permission the their growing Hindu community to put up Hanuman, half-man, half-ape?

Had they known, the citizens of former communist countries would have embraced Communism!

Georgia is a small country in the Caucasus. It does not even have four million inhabitants. Paris has more, London has more, and Berlin has approximately the same number of people. Yet, Berlin occupies an area of less than 1.000 square kilometers while Georgia’s area amounts to 70.000, i.e. Georgia’s area is seventy times as large. How many Americans out of every 100 could point at Georgia on a map? How many Americans out of every 100 could say anything about Georgia, without confusing the country with the American state? How many Americans out of every 100 even know that there is a country – a nation – by the name of Georgia in the first place?

Yet, this top democracy, this paragon of human rights – yes, we are talking about the United States – thinks it right to dictate to all the world’s nations, not excluding the tiniest of them, lying in a God forbidden corner of the globe, how they ought to live, how they ought to govern themselves, what laws they are allowed to pass and which laws they are forbidden to pass. This is also true of the relations between the big United States and tiny Georgia.

Georgia has aroused American concern twice within a couple of recent months. First, when Georgia’s parliament passed a law about foreign agents, and second when the same parliament passed a law banning homosexual propaganda. Washington along with its Brussels just cannot let such things go, they just cannot leave a tiny nation be. They need to watch their legislature closely and administer punishment the moment Georgians conduct their affairs in ways that the West does not like. One wonders why should there be a parliament in Georgia if all it is allowed to do is to copy Western laws? Why not a bunch of translators instead whose task would be to put in Georgian what the powers that be in Brussels and Washington want from them?

The law about foreign agents makes it mandatory on the part of an organization that operates in Georgia and is financed up to a certain level with foreign money to reveal this fact i.e. to register as a foreign agent; the law against the propaganda on the part of sexual deviants does not prosecute such individuals: it merely does not allow them to show off to the whole world which forms of copulation they practise. Never mind! Georgia has commited a crime. Georgia has committed a crime against humanity! Georgia has enacted anti-human, anti-liberal, anti-democratic legislation. News about the alleged anti-human, anti-liberal, anti-democratic legislation is quickly spread among others by Radio Free Europe (yes, it is still in operation!) and Voice of America. Funny, but citizens of the Soviet Union along with the citizens of the Comecon countries used to listen to the two broadcasters for years in search of reliable information. And you know what? Had the West propagated sexual perversions back at that time, the citizens of the Soviet Union and its European dependencies would have embraced Communists as defenders of… Christian! morality.

Sadly, no longer so. As it is, for the last thirty years since the fall of the USSR, the brains of the said citizens – especially of new generations – have been largely processed by the Western influence, so now the majority of them have had their mindsets changed. Still, small Georgia, which, too, has been subjected to Western propaganda for decades, has dared to throw down the gauntlet to the Empire. You may rest assured that a colourful revolution in Tbilisi (Georgia’s capital) is in the making.

Gefira 86: Sapere aude

Freedom of speech is not what characterizes humanity, human societies. Only rarely does it surface, for a historically speaking short moment, and then disappears. Why? There’s always a ruling group that holds power, and in order to hold power as long as possible, this groups needs not only to have control over the finances and the law enforcement, but also of the collective mind. It is the mind where seeds of opposition can be sown and where they can sprout, it is the mind that sparks dissent and opposition, it is the mind that leads people to rise up against their rulers. That is the simple reason why genuine freedom of speech, freedom of expression is unthinkable. It is unthinkable because it is impossible, because it sooner or later undermines the authority. That is why freedom of speech must be controlled, channelled or otherwise influenced. The rare moments when freedom of speech resurfaces are those historical times of equilibrium between a descending and an ascending ruling grup.

In the modern world censorship has become a word evoking the worst possible connotations. Dictators resort to censorship, Communists used to apply censorship, but democracies are all about freedom of expression… except that they are not. What do democracies do to simultaneously have censorship and not have it? The solution is easy and as old as human history. Democracies abolish the word censorship without abolishing censorship itself, democracies invent new ways of censoring content without having to resort to the old primitive methods of physically gagging someone’s mouth are imprisoning someone for his words. Democracies invent terms like combating disinformation or misinformation, like protection of the populace against malicious or inciting false news and ideas. That’s it! Censorship in a democracy? God forbid! Yet, you will agree that lies need to be suppressed, will you not?

Humans instinctively want to know the truth and wish to be able to pass correct judgement. In order to know the truth and in order to be able to pass correct judgement, one needs information, one needs varied information coming from different, politically or ideologically opposed sources. Only then can truth be discovered, only then can correct judgement be passed. Hence the need for consulting various information sources. Audiatur et altera pars, as the Romans used to say: let also the other party have a fair hearing. An argument can only be accepted as binding if it has been confronted with opposing arguments and stood its ground, when the argument turned out to (more closely) correspond to reality, to truth. How otherwise can we justly and impartially decide about anything?

How about misinformation or disinformation? If misinformation or disinformation are allowed currency together with information, in the long run the last mentioned will win out. Truth always wins out. As someone said: you can’t deceive all people all the time. Conversely, if information is suppressed under whatever noble pretexts, if you are punished or intimidated or ridiculed for wanting to consult various sources of information, then you may rest assured that those who want to punish, intimidate or ridicule you have been feeding lies to you and are now afraid of you exposing their mendacity. That’s a litmus test available to all of us. You don’t need to be an expert on anything, you only need to be vigilant: if the powers that be don’t want you to look for other sources of information, it clearly means that they want to conceal something and are afraid of being confronted with the truth.

Quid est veritas? was famously asked by Pilate. Yes, what is truth? It may not be easy to discover truth, but one thing is certain: we will never discover it without consulting varied sources of information, without exposing our minds to varied, opposing arguments. At least that much is true. It may be that you do not wish to investigate into various phenomena, events and news: why, it takes a lot of time and effort, and we all have our lives to live, our work to perform, our families to take care of, our vocations to fulfil. Nothing wrong with that. That is why societies delegate few individuals – like journalists or historians – to do the job for the rest of us, to present us with the results of their research efforts. That’s the way it ought to be. The only task that we – the consumers of someone else’s investigative work – are set with is to familiarize ourselves with the investigations done by others with this however sound principle that we must consult opposing sources of information and argumentation. The moment we are denied it, we know that we are being lied to, we know that we are being separated from truth.

There are many, many people who are in favour of global peace. Many of them join organizations and take part in demonstrations in support of international peace. Yet, these are usually empty gestures. It is not enough to yell, Give peace a chance; what needs to be done is to encourage all of us to give the other party to a conflict a fair hearing. Peace disappears when only one argumentation is heard and, consequently followed. Peace disappears when one argumentation deemed as correct makes it impossible for us to understand our opponents. One argumentation turns us into reckless automatons who believe they know reality, who are certain that they know truth while they don’t. If you want to give peace a chance, encourage people to listen to and read what the other party to the conflict has to say; if you want to give peace a chance, declare war on those who suppress selected sources of information and argumentation. Once you learn the argumentation of the other party, your belligerent attitude will almost always be done away with, or at least significantly reduced. Contrarily, if you clam up in your own world of allegedly true ideas, you are going to end up in a vicious conflict of attrition so much so if the other party to the conflict does the same.

It takes intellectual courage to think. Yes, genuine thinking is an act of courage. It is an act of courage to admit a thought that my attitude to an event, my belief in an idea, my evaluation of reality are perhaps not quite correct, are perhaps wrong, or perhaps downright wrong? It is an act of huge courage to admit that perhaps my opponent is not quite wrong, that my opponent is maybe right, maybe… absolutely right. It is probably easier to go to physical war and fight in the trenches than to subdue your own ego and surrender your own cherished beliefs. It was not without a reason that Romans used to say, imperare sibi maximum est imperium, or, to rule yourself is the ultimate form of power. It is really much easier to command troops in the field, or to withstand hardships than to admit that what you hold as sacred truth is not true.

Gefira Financial Bulletin #86 is available now

The two ways of the Rus’ian world
Which way, Russia?
A still more striking analogy
What way does a political class choose

How does that come about in a democracy?

Democracy? Picture to yourself a little town somewhere in the United States ruled by its inhabitants. In other words imagine that they practice democracy. Surely, they delegate the administrative work to a few representatives: others need to go about their everyday business. From time to time the inhabitants of the town hold a meeting, a rally. Some of them put forward a proposal. We need to have a school; we need to build a hospital; we need to repair some roads; we need this, we need that. Once they agree on a project, they need to chip in some of the money from every family. Will the people consent? Of course, they will. They will have a difference of opinion whether it is better to first put up a school or a hospital; they may have differing opinions about how large a school building ought to be; they may differ as to the amount of money they want to spend, they may agree to demand more money from the richer inhabitants, and the like.

Now picture to yourself someone puts forward a proposal to invite a significant number of foreigners, perfect strangers with a different religion and a different language, with a different culture to settle in the town and puts forward a proposal that the inhabitants of the town pay for everything the arrivals will need for months or maybe years. Imagine such a proposal is put to the vote. What results do you expect? Obviously, no one is going to pay month after month after another month for the upkeep of a Venezuelan or Somalian family. Picture to yourself that someone proposes to send a few youngsters from this town – someone’s sons, someone’s brothers. Someone’s husbands – to fight a bunch of Russians or Iraqis thousands of miles away in order to protect Ukrainians or to bring democracy to a town in Iraq. How many inhabitants of this theoretical town do you think would consent to the idea?

That’s genuine democracy, that is to say: the expression of the will of the people, the expression of the collective will of the people and its implementation. A summary of such towns and villages ought to act in a similar manner. As it is, thousands of such towns and villages collectively known as a state – a nation – a democratic republic act in ways that are entirely opposite to what we have described above. A few people – relatively very few people – entrusted with power make policies of which citizens – i.e. inhabitants of those thousands of towns and villages – would never ever approve. Worse, those millions of citizens are forced to pay for the projects that are totally beyond their scope of interest.

Barely anyone (not to say no one) is ready to accommodate perfect strangers from Africa or Asia with their families for years in their homes and provide for them. Yet, a state, a democratic state – supposedly a collection of millions of such families that make up the theoretical town from our thought experiment – accommodates millions of foreigners and pays for their living. How does that come about in… a democracy?

Preparing for new trade wars

Donald Trump wants to increase tariffs on Chinese even by up to 60%, and Democrats will have no choice as to agree to at least some of protectionism planned by the Republicans, or else China will flood the market w its products to the detriment of American domestic industry. In recent years, Western companies and financiers have invested heavily in China only to withdraw from the country at present.

Source: bloomberg.com

In the second quarter of 2024, 15 billion dollars were withdrawn from China. At the same time, exports from the Middle Kingdom are on the rise as companies increase their inventories of Chinese parts, components, etc. so as not to be so affected by potential trade wars. Put simply, we buy what we can from China, but we no longer invest there. This strategy is being pursued by many countries. As a result, freight costs are also rising. Below you will find transport costs from main ports in China (Containerised Freight Index – green line). The situation is similar to that after the end of the pandemic, when inflation began to rage.

Source: tradingeconomics.com

Companies are filling their warehouses and politicians will have a tough nut to crack if inflation rises as a result of trade wars. Already, 59% of Americans believe their country is in recession, despite good economic data.

It is worth remembering that the development of the global economy has been due to free trade for several decades, with the focus on China. This process is now set to be halted and many Americans would even like to see it reversed. This will benefit many European or American companies, but unfortunately it will be at the expense of ordinary citizens, who will pay more for many products. This will fuel inflation and at the same time slow down the economy. Such a situation is known as stagflation. Stagflation is therefore a possible scenario as downside risks dominate the markets, including geopolitical tensions and trade fragmentation.

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