What are you talking about. The largest contribution to nearly every GDP is consumption, including India and China. Where do you think the goods and services being produced go?
Have we really reached the point where people are saying "your people's purchase of food and shelter is evil and morally wrong while my peoples purchase of food and shelter is a moral good" with any level of seriousness?
It also suggests the US benefits from running a permanent trade deficit with the world, which is as absurd as saying a permanent trade surplus is good. In reality, both extremes are states that benefit the wealthy at the expense of workers in both places. US banks get the benefit of cheap capital, since Chinese firms and the state need somewhere to park their dollar earnings.
Meanwhile, US workers have to compete with much lower-cost labor (due in part to an over-valued dollar and under-valued yuan), and Chinese workers don't get the value of their savings because one of the ways China subsidizes export firms is by paying very low interest rates on household deposits, and lending out that money to export firms.
For more on this, I highly recommend the book "Trade Wars Are Class Wars" by Michael Pettis -- who, far from a raging Marxist, used to be a bond trader before getting his PhD in economics and getting hired to teach at Peking University.
The only countries that don't have a greater than 50% of their GDP being consumption are very small, extremely specialized economies like Singapore or Qatar.
If you look at China's GDP PPP it's almost 40 trillion $. All of that can't just be exports, believe it or not China is a middle income economy with more than a billion people and it's got entire ecosystems inside it that we westerners are totally unaware of.
This is exactly correct, but it's also what the Americans are doing when sanctioning India for buying Russian oil. Your purchase of Russian Oil is evil and morally wrong, while my (European) purchase of Russian gas is a moral good.
European oil and gas imports have gone way way down since Russia invaded Ukraine. Whereas Indian imports of Russian gas and oil have gone way way up. That’s the difference.
You keep changing the point you're trying to make. In any case, Europe buying more oil than India, while India is increasing importation can both be true.
Yes, Europe is doing a piss poor job decoupling from Russia and should be better held to account. However, this is an outcome of a well intentioned plan to integrate Russia into the Western sphere and hopefully prevent what is happening.
At the same time, Yes, India is significantly increasing purchases of Russian oil (going from .2% of Russian exports in 2022 to a whopping 45% of Russian exports in 2024). These purchases were made by a country who was well aware that the money they are transferring will be used almost exclusively in an aggressive war against a neighbor. India's decision to purchase Russian oil is probably the top reason that Russia is able to continue the war in Ukraine. India has contributed more to the Russian war effort than North Korea, Belarus, or China, and definitely deserves to be held to account.
How did I change the argument? You are being obtuse trying not to understand simple logic. If war is funded by money then how does it matter whether the money comes from oil sales or gas sales or uranium sales or services or machine sales?
You can try to hold anyone to account, but lets see if it's just talk or not.
Whether Europe decouples or not just shows their own conviction to fight this war. If they aren't having the conviction to fight a war that matters to them then why should India care? And my real argument is that none of you care about this war - except for the Ukrainians of course. The moment it really hurts you, you will negotiate or cut a deal or cut and run. This is what India understands, and this is why we don't care.
The guy above you claimed India increased importation and the EU decreased it. You claimed that was false because the EU imports more oil. Hopefully you can understand the difference of percentage change over time and a snapshot in time.
One area you are correct is that it doesn't matter how a country funds Russia. However, approximately 50-60 percent of the Russian federal budget as of 2025 is oil and gas sales, so India's oil and gas imports alone make up approximately 25% of the total spending of the Russian Federation.
The world is holding India to account for their part in the war in Ukraine. You mentioned it above - tariffs.
As for the US cutting and running, if there is one thing that the US is really, really good at is being in wars about 20 years longer than they said they were going to be. I'm not sure your argument makes any sense.
I'm not sure you are understanding the point. I did not claim they were importing more oil directly than India. But no one is counting how much they have supplemented it from 3rd parties who are reselling processed Russian oil back to them. Which is convenient and makes your "snapshot" incomplete and false.
As for being in a 20 year war, are you sure Americans are ok with that? Those other ones didn't really work in their favour. I'm not sure your argument will make an iota of sense to Americans.
Edit: And yeah you may be good at staying in 20 year wars with impoverished countries you sanctioned to hell for 20 years and run them over and call it shock and awe, and then spend 20 years fighting and losing an insurgency. But this one doesn't look like that kind of a war. American actions just don't make sense to me.
I think you might be confusing me with the United States government. I have had exactly zero say on the start or end of a war. In any case, you're again talking out of both sides of your mouth. Do Americans cut and run as soon as they get pressured, or do they spend 20 years fighting wars person to person in an insurgency? Or are you an AI bot that forgets the last output every time you hit post?
In any case, unless it's India who is buying and reselling to Europe, it doesn't matter. India and China together make up more than 80 percent of Russian Fossil fuel exports. The EU could be getting all of the remaining oil/gas that is going to others and still wouldn't be close to India.
So? My point is that EU and USA has deemed certain commodities as vital to themselves and not imposed any limits on those while sanctioning other commodities they don't care about.
Even that is a pretense since India processes and resells Russian origin commodities to both of them. That is not some great revelation either. There are not enough fossil fuel sources in the world to replace Russian ones. If they were serious about banning Russian oil consumption, they would simply demand that India proves its oil products are not manufactured using Russian oil and that would naturally reduce India's Russian oil imports. But they won't because that will make the global oil prices shoot up and trigger recession.
In the face of reality, trends don't matter. All of this is just an argument I've presented about the oil market. None of this even takes into account India's own preferences and history which weigh more on the decision.
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u/Myredditsirname 2d ago
What are you talking about. The largest contribution to nearly every GDP is consumption, including India and China. Where do you think the goods and services being produced go?
Have we really reached the point where people are saying "your people's purchase of food and shelter is evil and morally wrong while my peoples purchase of food and shelter is a moral good" with any level of seriousness?