India bans import of laptops, tablets with immediate effect | Hacker News Reader

India bans import of laptops, tablets with immediate effect

itwire.com

25 pointsresolutebat10 comments

The only effect this will have is that the Indian consumer will get worse quality laptops at a higher price. Some middlemen will import cheap Chinese parts and assemble laptops in India and make bank by over charging for the assembly process.

Also, the delay is three months. You probably need a year to get all the permissions to start setting up an assembly plant in India. So expect a world of pain for the next year if the government is serious about this.

Delayed but not much

"After protests, India delays laptop, tablet import ban by three months"

https://itwire.com/government-tech-news/technology-regulatio...

What's the point in engaging in this kind of trumpian bluster for India? They're not going to become a world leader in semi fab. They can't even build enough toilets for the average Indian.

That’s more of a reason to engage in this kind of activity.

Also. No country in the world has infrastructure for that many people, let alone India.

So you eliminate all imports?

That makes absolutely no sense at all.

Also, as far as I can tell there wasn’t any major electronics shortages in India outside of the pandemic driven ones anyways. So it seems like whatever system did exist worked.

And frankly, if you want to promote local manufacturing, doing it at the expense of your biggest exporting industry, the technology services industry, might be the stupidest idea possible.

Imagine being a software services provider telling your client that they can’t take their business because they’re unable to replace the laptop that just broke since there’s a 6 month waiting list for it.

It’s fascinating seeing India going back to 1989. Reversing the changes of liberalization which is widely agreed by nearly every Indian as the one change that allowed India to grow and compete globally seems to make no sense. And it’s even worse that Indians are trusting the government that brought demonetization to make these changes.

Yes. This is where we had so many great ideas come from!

We had Brexit. We had protectionism. We had Nehru’s close mindedness on foreign Investment.

Finally we get rid of the shadows of the 90s, when India opened its market and ended up being a dynamo of foreign investment.

——

Joke’s aside, the really absurdity is that this is happening under Modi’s regime.

It may sound critical, but Modi’s regime is highly mercantile. There are far too many people in the cabinet who (should) viscerally hate protectionism.

If not in parliament, then amongst their supporters - many of whom are modern business men.

This is weird. Something else has to be afoot. I can’t square it otherwise.

——-

Edit: Nope: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/how-to/why-govt-ba...

Apparently protectionism is the root.

What in the living hells?

The toilet situation is actually doing pretty well at this point.

yes. The only people crying are the people who get fired for publishing stats about it.

Yes, what was the point of closing Indian car market in 1952? 40 years of huge tariffs and restrictions. Naive Indians expecting to build own competing brands and corporations ahahaha

hahaa aaaa wait, Tata owns Jaguar _and_ Land Rover? what happened? this wasnt supposed to work!!1

Look at naive Japanese in 1950-60 with their funny foreign currency quota and ownership limits https://www.jstor.org/stable/43294946 What was the plan? to somehow subsidize domestic electronic expertize and take over the world? cWhere did tehy come up with such childish ideas, this would never work ahahahaha haha

aaaa wait, what are US domestic TV brands again?

Frontline: Coming From Japan [The Fall Of The US Television Industry] (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/09/30/j...

"JAPAN AND THE BIG SQUEEZE September 30, 1990. HOW DID Japan destroy the American television industry? The secret history of that strategy reveals how Japanese manufacturers and the Japanese government first created an anti-competitive cartel ..."

"Japan's raid on the American market dates back to 1956, when the largest Japanese manufacturers formed the Home Electronic Appliance Market Stabilization Council, an illegal production cartel. The intent of the cartel was to monopolize the domestic market for television receivers, radios and other home electric products and to exclude foreign imports. Once their home market was secure, they would launch a drive against the far richer American market."

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-04-23-870131...

"TARIFFS WON`T AFFECT MOST JAPANESE TV SETS Apr 23, 1987 The new tariffs on Japanese color televisions will have little or no effect on the U.S. market, because most sets are exempt."

ok thats TVs, but otherwise US electronics industry is safe and sound with no trouble .. Mastering the Market: Japanese Government Targeting of the Computer Industry https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706788

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/28/business/japan-s-big-lead...

New Japanese Chip Dwarfs Capacity of U.S. Competitors https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-26-fi-5965-s...

Surely that wont translate to other avenues, US would lead in game consoles over some third rate Japanese TV vendor ;)

What about China? All foreign corporations are being forced into minority shares and joint ventures with government entities, not to mention Entertainment (movies, games) and Internet companies are outright banned from that market altogether. Surely This Time this wouldnt work, right?

Surely this could not go wrong in any way.

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