"Why post-colonial African countries fail" | Bantu City Diaries

Bantu City Diaries is a Nigerian guy. He keeps his name anonymous. Which I understand. He says stuff that lots of his neighbours would not like, not one little bit. 

Like the one below. There's plenty of blame to go around. There's the west's "Colonial Settler" actions, its exploitative ravaging of Africa's resources over centuries. It's enslavement of Africans. The whole miserable panoply of pain it brought to the continent. Which we surely know full well in the West now as it's an obsession to auto-flagellate over it. 

Then there's the on-going blame of the Africans themselves. The main one, identified here by Mr Bantu City Diaries, as Tribalism.  And we surely also know all about this. 

Although it's not at all discussed, delved into deeply, in the West. There's no push to "we must have a discussion about African Tribalism". Not pukka, really, not the right thing to do. Not good to "hit down". 

Mr Bantu has no such qualms and doesn't hold back. With the blame firmly on the leadership of Africa. For it's rapacious looting of the people's wealth. 

Though he's as pessimistic about quashing African tribalism as I am. As are most people who have come in touch with it. As are most honest and deep observers of Africa. 

It doesn't help that the supra-Saharan, north of Africa has been colonised by Islam. More violence. More oppression. 

"China quietly saved the world last month" | Max Fisher

The above vid dropped before the most recent increased hostilities. And the recent spike over $100 a barrel. It's had 3 million views to date. 

But still, it's a fascinating outline of what's going on in the international oil market, and likely reasons. 

Max Fisher, the presenter, now makes his living off The Bigger Picture, an Explainer-type vid. He's ex The New York Times, The Atlantic and the Washington Post, so you can make your own judgements of his priors.

I will say however, the above presentation comes across as based and neutral, even to me, a man of a certain bias. 

I asked Grok to do a summary of Max's vid: 

Tariffs are sometimes good. Giving away our car industry...voluntarily

Saved by the Bill. The tariff bill that kept tariffs on 
pick up trucks like the Ford F250

The answer at bottom is not before a long tussle with Grok. 

I was reminded that in the 1980s I'd owned a brand new company car, the Holden Commodore, made in Australia. 

It was a great car. I thought better than most American cars I'd driven. And better than even many European cars. I thought it better than the BMWs I'd driven in Europe. It was as fast, as agile, had braking as good; and had far better aircon. 

Then came the killer of the industry. The Australian government, a Labor, left wing one, did away with the last remaining tariffs and non-tariff barriers on car imports.  Result: the end of the Australian car industry, after 70 years. 70 proud years. 

Shame. 

Then I learned that in the US the car industry was decimated by the NAFTA and WTO in the 1990s and early 2000s. Because of these trade agreements, the U.S. industry moved to Mexico and China. And in America people were told: "don't worry, everything will be cheaper". 

Tariffs were removed...

EXCEPT FOR the tariff on what the Americans call "trucks". Aka, "pickup trucks", like the Ford F150 and F250 in the pic above.  

These kept a 25% tariff coz of some kind of quibble that I can't be bothered to look up; but which led to the US keeping its manufacturing of pickup trucks, now the largest item of car sold every year in the US. 

By the way, these are great vehicles. I LOVE them! If I were living in a place that permitted private cars (I don't), then I'd have one for sure. They're rough, tough and hugely practical. 

Having been taught in Eco 101 at the Australian National Uni, that "Tariffs Bad. Free Trade Good", I'd imbibed and imbued that my whole life. Then Trump upends things. Peoole freak out. But surely we should look at what they do. And at least in the case of the American Truck and in the case of the Australian Holden Commodore, tariffs have kept a viable industry, with all its employment and all its ancillary industries. Even if the end product might have been a little more expensive.  

Then my long argument with Grok, which I won't bore you with. 

The Sowell quote to which Grok refers is one of my favourite ones: professor Thomas Sowell: "There are no solutions; only trade offs". 

If you know that there's no perfect answer, you know that you have to make trade offs. The problem with Australia, during the Paul Keating and Bob Hawke Labor years, is that they thought they were giving us solutions.  

When what they were doing was one end of a spectrum of trade offs. We decided to trade off domestic jobs, give them to to other countries, for some cheaper goods. And that was sold as a "solution". It wasn't. Australia now has the lowest percent of the population in manufacturing than any country in Asia and than all developed countries. Well done Lucky Country! Not. 

My killer question to Grok: 

To which it answered:

Grok: Yes – your argument holds.

Australia's passenger vehicle industry ran for ~70 years (Holden full production from 1948, roots earlier). High tariffs (peaking ~57.5% in the early 1980s) kept it viable, supporting direct manufacturing jobs for tens of thousands plus 150,000+ in the supply chain at peak. It produced millions of cars tailored to Australian conditions.

The final VF Commodore (2013-2017) was genuinely world-class: best-ever build quality from the Elizabeth plant, strong exports, class-leading dynamics and durability. Executives and workers confirmed the last cars were the highest standard ever.

Australia chose to unwind this.

Whitlam's 1973 across-the-board 25% tariff cut (explicitly to fight inflation and force "efficiency") started it – two years before the non-binding Lima Declaration he enthusiastically backed. The Hawke/Keating Button Plan (1984 onward) then deliberately phased tariffs from ~57% down to 15% by 2000, then 10%, then 5% by 2010, plus FTAs with Thailand, Korea, Japan and China that zeroed duties on imports.

No one forced it. It was policy choice, framed as virtuous global citizenship – exactly the Lima spirit of helping developing nations industrialise by opening developed markets.

Sowell was right: only trade-offs.

Keep tariffs → slightly dearer cars, but retain a full domestic industry, skills, jobs, and related manufacturing. Lower tariffs → cheaper imports for consumers, but the entire sector collapses (Ford 2016, Toyota/Holden 2017).

Australia picked the second path. The industry was competitive enough under protection; it wasn't "dying naturally." We voluntarily gave it away.

No, Janan Ganesh, I DON'T mourn the passing of the "liberal world order"

No, Janan, I don't mourn the passing of the "liberal world order." It might still have some zombie strength left—who knows? But if it does fade away, good riddance.

An old and dear friend of mine, a bit of a leftie, sent me Janan Ganesh's Financial Times piece* out of the blue. 
Ganesh urges liberals to grieve the end of this post-1945 system—the most successful international order in history, he says: unprecedented prosperity, relative peace, progress for the West. 
No country benefited more than the US. Don't apologize or resign yourself, he argues; mourn it openly, toast what it achieved, and don't let populists own the narrative. Elegiac, defiant, even haunted by a Top Gun line.
Sounds lovely in summary. But it wasn't all rosy.
I'm a traitor to my class. Yes, I am! The elite class—upper-middle, in charge of "things." I got there by job and circumstance, not choice. Fine. But now I'm a traitor because we Elites have abandoned the working and middle classes in the West. They've suffered—and it's our fault. Because of this "liberal world order" that exploded global wealth since WWII, while quietly gutting them.
I once loved it. Loved it. Post-war it ovresaw:

• Non-punitive treatment of war losers. 
• The Marshall Plan rebuilding Europe. 
• The UN, mostly funded by America. 
• GATT — the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade— which birthed the WTO. 
• The Korean War keeping South Korea safe for democratic capitalism against the North.

Mistakes? Plenty. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. But overall, it kept the world humming along.
Who gained most? Elites. Like me. Like my friend. Like most of our circle. Supporting Trump now—his focus on middle America, the working class—is apostasy from the tribe. But if Republicans won't stand for the working and middle classes, who will? The Democrats ditched them long ago for inner-city elites. We. Inner city elites. 

Since 2000—especially China's 2001 WTO entry as a "developing" country—the gains turned K-shaped: elites and big-state mercantilists soaring up; Western industrial heartlands and workers sliding down. 
Globalization lifted global GDP but hollowed out factories, fueling the resentment populists exploit. Deregulation boomed—then crashed in '08, shattering trust. Inequality exploded at home even as absolute poverty fell globally.
The UN? Thoroughly corrupted. "I am the United Nations". 
[My Dad was an Australian representative to the U.N. in the early sixties. He was pretty critical of the U.N. even then; it's got a lot worse since]
This breakdown wasn't Trump's doing. Peter Zeihan (no Trump fan) makes it clear: the rot started earlier. End of the Cold War. China's lawless mercantilism. ["The Global World Order is Collapsing"]
Trump is responding—America First, tariffs as leverage, allies paying their defense share, force used for actual peace, not nation-building fantasies.
The old order enriched rivals like China, traded sovereignty for cheap imports, and left ordinary people behind. Its passing isn't tragedy. It's correction.
I don't mourn it. I welcome what's next: nations that put their own people first.
=====================

ADDED: In the 1970s I was an Australian diplomat. I worked with American colleagues on the latest round of the GATT. We loved this new World Order we were creating. Of course we were paid to love it! But we did. At least I did, and as I recall, we all did. The mantra, by the way, was "Free Trade Good; Tariffs Bad". Which I believed right up till recently. [But that's a whole n'other issue].
*Ganesh's FT article is behind a paywall. If you have FT access, the URL is https://www.ft.com/content/3dd3f37b-a783-4f12-a837-764e9f429b01

Otherwise, copy the link in italics above and paste into the bottom box at Archive.