The Thailand Special Thread - New Developments/News

[Sprintey]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

They didn't do a very good last time, it was PAPPA GOVERNMENT SAVE US! OUR ONE CUSTOMER WE SHARE NO CULTURAL VALUES WITH STABBED US IN THE BACK!

Except Pappa Government basically caused the retribution by daring to ask our biggest trading partner 'WTF, your virus bro?' (how dare we question our Sino-overlords)

Then when China backed off, they've gone straight back to having one customer, in a move that surprised absolutely no one.

We've all heard of monopoly, but no one seems to understand the concept of the monopsony, which is what our producers have backed themselves into a corner with.

The problem is you need to do the sales work to diversify before you get stuck in the trade war.

Its a very one sided relationship, our producers need China, but China doesn't need our producers, its a 'nice to have' for their middle class who can afford our products, and there's plenty of other countries they can source commodities from, thats the problem being a commodity trader, they're commodities - low value, easily sourced/produced goods and why Australia has an 'economic complexity' ranked somewhere around Uganda, because we basically either dig shit up out of the ground, sell animals/vegetables or sell real estate to foreign interests using our market to launder money out of their own economies.

I have issues with China like everyone else, but lets use some lube before we bend over. I'm waiting for the accusations to start about me being on CCP payroll

You're all here playing checkers and China is playing 4D chess, we're up shit creek without a paddle if we play trade war with our biggest trading partner before we get our shit together and diversify to new markets.

It's off topic, but they actually DO need the coal and iron ore - we're a very reliable, relatively close, high quality provider. So when they spat the dummy and blacklisted our products, they shot themselves in the foot badly with coal, forcing rationing and factories were prioritised leading to reports of everyday people not having heating in north China's brutal winter. Notice in all that they didn't blacklist iron ore - we hold them over a barrel with that one. On top of that 70% of the East Coast's gas is on contract to go to China, I wonder if that's significant?

There's an idea within the BRICS that commodity producers get together, form a currency backed by the resources, and basically demand more/hold power over consumers. In this tariff example, Australia inadvertently (Scomo, did you think before you spoke? Nevertheless, it was the most bold bit of statesmanship done by an Aussie PM post WW2) ended up doing the commodity squeeze on the C in the BRICS.

In history, the Dutch East Indies turned off the oil to imperial Japan in 1940 with not enough military muscle to defend it, as Japan expanded throughout South East Asia (Indochina). Not long after, they got rolled.

Also out of interest, the Imperial Japanese war aim was the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere', whereby raw materials from the 'Southern Area' were value added in Japan, as part of an empire. (They largely achieved this post war!) If you look at the Made In China 2049 plan, it's not all that dis-similar.

Our economic complexity rivalling Uganda is due to insanely stupid industry policy for the last 40 years, we've complained about it here enough. If we deliver coffees to another fast enough, we can raise GDP. If not, add more people.