In these times when Venezuela is just giving up any natural resources under the barrel of a gun[1], it’s good to remember that Bolsonaro intended to privatize not only Petrobas(, and almost all public enterprises), which would have been bought by westerners, as his father did with Eletrobas, but also to give out Brazil’s rare earths(, the second largest in the world), instead of transforming them locally as Lula logically intends to.
[1] : the translation may not make it clear that she’ll return or sell non-essential state-owned companies(, before giving up power to someone who’ll reverse the rest of their policies), and here’s the full speech(, transcript).
The authoritarianism of weaker communists always seemed required to protect the revolution from stronger anti-communist attacks/influences, accusing them of defending themselves from the local and not the foreign opposition is our{western} great lie, our citizens usually don’t have the first notion of the extent of our influence worldwide. China, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, etc., only concerns color revolution and not everything surrounding it, and we(sterners) already justify authoritarian measures based on alleged foreign interference(, even cancelling the romanian election and jailing its winner), so how could we not understand them in front of much higher powers ? It’s unfair, and as usual we(sterners) are the assholes.
Everyone knows that N.Maduro was literally desperate(, that’s an understatement,) to alleviate the huge suffering that the west inflicted on venezuelans, but never forget that Venezuela was finally overcoming the sanctions and objectively returning to growth, which is when/why the US invaded. I also disagree that electric cars will make their oil useless(, it’s partially a bad example, but the chinese coal mines will be useful to make synthetic diamonds, and you can’t find oil on asteroids).
Feable attempt at a solution : since she holds their democratic revolution, then pass these decisions through a referendum while being clear/transparent about the consequences from the west. If these decisions are accepted, then you wouldn’t lose much. If these decisions are rejected, then you can always submit a new referendum once the sanctions come back, at least you wouldn’t hide the real situation to venezuelans. But i do believe in direct democracy, they’re in charge of their future, and will either assume the responsability of their mistakes by falling to the US, or somehow manage to overcome these difficulties together(, only allow the same importance to pro-capitalist medias as the west allows to anti-capitalist medias, that’d be fair/unattackable, we(sterners) can’t be saved as easily as venezuelans here). If they want to suffer more then it’s their choice/freedom, i think.

https://x.com/evoespueblo/status/2103275989249720683

Also, our theories are asking for a small state, but the poorest countries around the world, e.g. Bangladesh, have an almost inexistent state, which collects nothing and hence invests in nothing.
It’s only indirectly related, but i wanted to mention that somewhere.

When/If such means were used by governments opposed to Brussels they were described as democratic backsliding, but now it’s democratic restoration, what a contradiction.
And we’ll only hear about, e.g., Georgia or Hungary, or other opponents, exaggerating their misdeeds while ignoring ours

(Of course they’ll attack Serbia( again), i cannot wait for our turn to be sanctioned to death ; we made it abundantly clear that diversity isn’t allowed, so as you make your bed you must lie in it.)

The EU debanked the famous party DiEM25, and these aren’t the only severe restrictions imposed by the power on the bank accounts of its political opponents(, e.g. France’s National Front and Juan Branco’s Les Ruches, Germany’s AfD and Communist Party, Britain’s Reform UK, …).
In France we count ~250 cases each year of political parties/candidates encountering difficulties to open bank accounts.
Then there’s also the debanking of individuals(, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, George Galloway, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, John Nicholson and Norma Turner, …), and news outlets(, UK’s The Canary and PressTV and RT, Germany’s Compact and Kontrafunk and Israel Heute, …). I took the first enumeration and am not aiming for exhaustivity here.

If you want more : https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/doklady/2116571/?lang=en

Pro-Russia Narek Karapetyan in Armenia as well

In New Caledonia, France just closed 48 polling stations out of 56, greatly complicating the votes for the poorest part of the population(, usually pro-independence). I’m from France and that’s one more thing not known.

They’re still not totally clear on their foreign policy(, which is required to join the EU), e.g. by refusing to recognize Kosovo and sanctioning Russia 🤷

But they may change their mind after being elected, and yeah, big victory a few months after winning Hungary.

I think it’s mostly economics related

Undoubtedly, that’s why sanctions work, but they let their oligarchs keep control despite the economic disaster of the post-1991 “experiment”, and that’s partly because of propaganda ; they also considered that there was no viable economic model to their East despite China’s rise, and that’s also partly because of capitalist-induced propaganda.
Their institutions right down to even their statistical institutes were already controlled by the west before 2014, and almost each of their minister of Culture came from western Ukraine(, excepting Ivan Dziouba and Iouri Bohoutsky), among dozens of other things, without counting western lies(, one out of so many, e.g.).
So while socio-economics clearly are the main driver behind leader&population decisions(, it’s not straightforward, the quick catch-up after the 90s curve is less surprising than a country (re)starting from zero like the PRC or african countries, i also have many doubts on the pertinence of the GDP), i’ll still continue to accuse propaganda when it affirms that there is no alternative 🤷.
That said, fighting the Empire means that your population will suffer for your idea(l)s, no doubt that Ukraine would be sanctioned for joining the Russian Federation, and develop perhaps even worse economic difficulties than until now. Russia knows that, and won’t promise them an economic miracle if ukrainians (re)join them.

Well, who knows, but we may apparently not wait for the midterms before “liberating” iranian women from anti-zionism(, if not this year then afterwards) :

Fuck the US, n°1 terrorist state on Earth, as per usual.

I just hope V.Zelensky and ukrainians won’t give up on a slav/Rus future(, there’s not enough diversity/centers).
Western interference in driving Ukraine away from Russia isn’t something that should be demonstrated anymore(, each sanctioned country is attacked, there were so many lies, systematically, dozens in 2004 and 2014, western ingerence in every facet of their society, and no pushback/awareness, no more than we(sterners) push back against our oligarchs’ influence), we(sterners) would never accept a tenth of the interferences practiced abroad.
Of course, we promised NATO wouldn’t expand, and proceeded regardless despite many warning of the consequences, classic.

(video clip if it doesn’t display, source)

I hope the Rus future will hold even if it doesn’t gain back Ukraine’s historical support, it’s not as if they aren’t used to suffer/struggle, but it’s sad how easy it was to manipulate ukrainians(, not that difficult to prove).

Anyhow, whether or not ukrainians join back russians, perhaps that the Rus exception will fell as well in a few decades, and stop supporting Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, etc.
After all, there are none more scarier than the Empire, who proved again and again that one rule of the international ugliest “game” is «the winner takes all»(, it’s we{humans} who make up these rules, not Nature, we could see our diversity as a wealth instead of a cause for disunity).

Some solutions to stay Chouardian :

- the Subcarpathian Ruthenia(, 12.000km²,) could be exchanged for Transcarpathia(, 4.000km²).
That would be a big unequal exchange for Ukraine-Belarus-Russia, and stay conditional to a local referendum, so that the population could choose independence instead.
I’m against it because it’s unequal.

- Eastern Galicia(, 55.000km²,) could be given to ‘the European Union’/Poland without anything in return, except perhaps one more lie that we’ll stop relentlessly attacking our eastern flank.
I’d also be against that, of course.

It seems that there could be a path for a frozen conflict that would turn into Ukraine later joining back the Rus side in order to recover some territories(, probably by joining the rest of the Rus under a common army), but that would require europeans to stop having claims over Ukraine.

(This comment was insufficiently sourced, most westerners ignoring the extend of our interferences in Ukraine and around the whole world)

(edit : downvotes w/o explaining where i’m wrong, i almost missed that about Lemmy/Reddit, please continue, perhaps that you could also report me in the future(, with(out) angry one-liners misrepresenting my p.o.v.), that’d be much more efficient 🙂)

(edit2 : hmm)

The RAND Corporation wrote a whitepaper that basically translates to “How to destroy Russia and take all their shit.”
Russia is more democratic than America, despite their defensive authoritarian tactics to stave off our own aggression.

Nuh-uh, this is what a real democracy looks like :

Anyway, unlike the disinformation of these russian propaganda medias(, that our democracy fortunately censored to preserve our freedom), i know that Putler will die of his multiple cancers anytime now, despite being one of the richest man on Earth.
Ukraine is clearly winning by killing ten times more russians each day, they only need to recruit a few more valiant soldiers, just don’t believe these fake videos online.

I saw a comment which made me do some research for ChatGPT(, could have used Deepseek or an other chinese LLM as well, i have not double-checked the data) : https://file.garden/aqbfeK4DJSCL_vhC/GNI_Atlas_PPP_US_relative_2013_2023.xlsx

My main observation would be that the USA grew at +49%(, +20% in constant-PPP GNI per capita,) while the world only grew at +23%(, +15% in constant-PPP GNI per capita).
There is no catch-up, and even if the world growth rate was twice ours it’d still wouldn’t have caught up by 2100. So the gap is already huge, and keeps getting bigger.
(Double every price and income, you’ll double the nominal GDP(, measured by the Atlas method,) but not PPP-ajusted, although even PPP-ajusted it’ll still double with the number of good or services(, such as the example of digging holes to fill them afterwards). I should probably search for other/better measures of prosperity.)

The difference between the table and his tweet is that mine is per capita relative to the previous years of that country, while S.Bhalla’s table is an aggregate relative to the world income(, i ended at 2023 since some data was unavailable, but should have started at 2011 like him).

The EU “decline” in nominal/Atlas is caused by the euro//dollar exchange rate.
A weaker exchange rate will end up reducing our{european} purchasing power as well(, when we’ll import goods&services from the US, invest in their companies, go to work/study there, …), even when domestic purchasing power is relatively stable. But after all, our theories say that it’s good, because european exports will be more competitive, like the t-shirts of Bangladesh, or the price of mines in the Global South, so we win, right ?
And protecting our industries from foreign investments is communism, so they’ll be cheaper for the americans to buy.

The BRICS average(, population-weighted,) was 10% of the US level in 2013 and is still 10% in 2023 :


(Here’s an ourworldindata equivalent for the second graph)

For France, here’s in nominal, and in PPP after faithfully applying trickle-down economic policies.
The right is always presented by capitalist-owned medias as the sensible choice for economic prosperity(, and who doesn’t want economic prosperity), even when they failed their mandate they still present themselves as the responsible choice for the economy, with the exact same promises for decades leading to the destruction of past social gains, with the same absence of results when elected, and with the same repeated failure, followed by the same promises, and they keep being elected and failing because “it’s difficult but it’d be worse without me”, there’ll never be a time when we’ve ended unemployment(, or homelessness,) like the u.s.s.r. did, they’ll always want to make us more competitive by slashing social benefits and increasing inequalities).
A poorer working class means a wealthier capitalist class(, less social mobility, etc.), which apparently means a wealthier working class, in theory. African countries ought to increase inequalities if they want to be wealthier, the share of the capitalists will increase but the overall pie will increase even faster, so it’s all good)

(Even if bottom-up policies were in effect during the Trente Glorieuses, i don’t think that trickle-down policies have a greater impact than neo-colonialist policies.
And i don’t know if enriching citizens to let them waste their money in non-productive things like holidays/entertainment is worse than having fewer capitalists waste much ‘more individually in luxury items/services’/‘less globally than wealthy workers’, after all economic development aims to improve human lives.
At first sight, it seems like 100% of the profits should be invested in the company(, r&d, infrastructure, …, but neither for salaries, nor lucrative properties, nor even a state if it’s mismanaged i suppose(, some countries like Venezuela even let citizens decide how parts of their taxes should be spent, while North Korea has no taxes since the state keep the profits of its public companies, both cases in which we(sterners) deny our involvement in destroying them through sanctions/…) ; since one of the many negative externality of competition is to discourage from R&D, it’ll lower the selling prices if there’s no oligopoly, and if there are no problems anywhere else in the long chain of events, then it may end up making the consumers/workers profit.
It’d be much more direct to give the profits in salaries, and even let the workers decide on the company investments, with the advantage of motivating them with a bonus directly linked with the company profits ; however, there would be large inter-companies inequalities, and a company who gives less to its employees would have a competitive advantage, nothing new, just saying. I guess tests in socialist countries weren’t that successful if they didn’t extend democratic workplaces/companies, nor unsuccessful enough to completely get rid of them.
Public companies seemed like a good enough solution anyway, and french public workers can attest that they had better working conditions than in private companies, so it was a relative success compared to the private sector. They also had a more reasonable salary grid, no capitalist taking their passive share(, and being the sole deciders of its amount), etc.)

To stay with the theme, it’s worth repeating that western companies make a lot of profit per product, while the global South has much thinner margins.

[3] : Their initially less reliable infrastructure would be one starting disadvantage among others, and they would unavoidably need to rely heavily on imports as long as an ecosystem isn’t built(, a western electronics company benefits from the competitive advantage of their access to experienced local suppliers, toolmakers, engineers, logistics, subcontractors, …), which only seems doable for large countries(, smaller countries would need some kind of union). And there are other cumulative advantages they’d have to compete with.

Apart from the other unsatisfying ‘’solutions’’ exposed above, and i.i.r.c., “my” main solution exposed in the past was an alliance of the South to increase the price of all raw materials(, until the wealthier countries start mining asteroids, and become able to cultivate any plant cheaply enough to compete with better climates), like the O.P.E.C. did for oil.
It is currently the contrary, since these countries are competing against each other to lower this price, as well as to offer less taxes, royalties, labour/environmental regulations, a cheaper land, more subsidies, … It says here that the worldwide corporate income tax decreased from 40% in 1980 to only 23% in 2021, which isn’t counting the increase of incentives.
Increasing the price of these raw materials wouldn’t hurt the competitivity of any company, because the price of their competitor would also have to be rised, it’s only the consumer who would have to pay a higher share to these developing countries.
I’m told that it’s a classic prisoner dilemna since it’d be more profitable if all joined compared to none, but it’d be even more profitable to be the only country not joining the union ; after all, it’d also be more profitable for workers to strike and they don’t.
The International Coffee Agreement didn’t have an export floor price, and dissolved in 1989, but it kinda represented such alliance. These kind of cartels will have to sort disagreements over : quotas, entry of new members, cheating from some members, competition from substitutes and non-members, … Their strategy was to reduce their exports in order to increase the export price, with a target range, which may end up with the same result as an export floor, but i like it less since it enforces a reduction of production. However, if they chose this, it’s because it may be necessary.
We(sterners) will finance production in non-member countries agreeing to sell their raw material at the previous cheaper price, while launching trade/investment negative consequences at member countries, and if that’s not enough then we can restrain aid, security cooperation, or even market access, and if that’s still not enough there are covert actions, sanctions, and even war. The pressure wouldn’t only be foreign, but domestic here as well.

If the problem isn’t that we don’t want the Global South to reach our standard of living(, i’ve been light in the accusations here, but it’s a bit suspect that our ‘’friendly advices’’, like our structural-adjustment programs, are either bringing back or maintaining these countries in poverty, while those disobeying our advices are the ones performing the best), but that we’ll refuse to give these countries a higher share because we’re only oh-so-concerned about an increase of price for the consumers(, reminder that the competitiveness of all companies would be the same), then there’s the solution of inversing the tariff escalation through export tariffs and/or a floor export price, e.g., a lithium-producing alliance would have a very high tariff export on raw lithium concentrate, but less and less for lithium carbonate, then cathode materials, then battery cells, and eventually 0% on complete batteries, resulting in the same final price for the consumer.
There would be a disadvantage for western companies because new non-western international companies would emerge, and our whole economy is based on transforming their raw materials, so perhaps that there’s no mystery to unveil, and that it’s just our selfishness that is once again the core of the problem, but that’s never a satisfying answer.
Just take the psychedelics you’ve banned without knowing and realize that there’s no distinction between your self and the collective, or don’t and continue to complain about the ‘’problem of evil’’. Or, more realistically, we(sterners) are good people who have a very good reason for participating in the ugliness of our present and not wanting to fix/improve it, and i just failed to search/find correctly these reasons.

I don’t know if the reader is satisfied by my “solution(s)”, i’m not, it feels incomplete, and there’s always the reply “then why have they still not put in place such solution by now ?”

Edit : https://x.com/i/status/2085136336969695567
In December 2022, Zimbabwe prohibited exports of lithium ore.
In June 2025, the government announced that exports of lithium concentrate would also be prohibited(, from January 2027).
On the 25th February 2026, it suspended exports of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates immediately.
Two months later, the suspension was partially lifted, and the government introduced a transitional system of export quotas, financial-disclosure requirements, labour and environmental conditions, commitments to build lithium-sulphate plants, and an export tax pending the full 2027 ban.
As the tweets states, the same month, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt’s operation made Zimbabwe’s first export of domestically produced lithium sulphate. This chemical plant reportedly cost ~$400 million with a nominal annual capacity of ~50,000 tonnes. They apparently need much more than this one before the 2027 ban, please succeed.
Zimbabwe has been suffering from western sanctions for decades, but its sanction program has been mostly terminated since 2024, although it also added 11 persons, including the president, and as usual people tied to the country’s economy. The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic “Recovery” Act also complicate access to international financing. UN sanctions ended in 1979.
Sanctions don’t prevent westerners from ‘building refineries’/‘helping Zimbabwe climb the added value ladder, nor other countries’, we just don’t do it.

Edit 2 : I just found out that australian gas companies are 95.7% Foreign Owned
From here :

Gas tax advocates often compare Australia’s export revenue to other major LNG exporters, such as Norway and Qatar, which rake in tens of billions of dollars every year.
But AEP argues that it is not a fair comparison, as Norway and Qatar have very different tax regimes and they both publicly own a large share of their gas resources, unlike Australia, which relies more heavily on private investment.

And from there :

The committee finds that lack of timely, transparent entity-level data continues to make it difficult for industry, government and the community to have a shared understanding of revenue, profits, and PRRT liabilities.

But here’s an estimation :

The combined share of profits captured by Australia’s corporate tax, royalties, and the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax was about 30 per cent of coal and LNG profits between the 2019-20 and 2023-24 financial years. Australia took less than 20 per cent of gas profits.

• protectionism(≠autarcy) : Infant industries should be protected(, e.g. through state credit without interests, tariff protectionism, subsidies, public contracts, …). If it’s a private company, then such privileges ought to be revoked in favor of better companies if promises aren’t kept(, in terms of productivity increase, successful increase in the exports, investments in r&d, …), they’re not here to leech off the money given by their fellow citizens. The problem here would be to correctly assess the directions/objectives to set, and to act adequately.
  A non-socialist state unable to retract subsidies&aids when the targets aren’t met is capitalist-owned, the experiment has run long enough to realize that their greed is insatiable and that they should be constrained into doing what politicians/experts consider to be good for the collective at the expense of their personal bank account ; they’ll argue that they can do both because they mostly care about the latter, then set objectives constraining them into caring for the former, and only help companies able to meet them.
  Kinda out-of-topic, but i believe that some sectors should be heavily taxed ; whenever it’s ‘used only by the wealthiest individuals’/’not essential’, then it’s usually a worst allocation of ressources. Just like digging holes to fill them afterwards employ people but is a waste of their time, what we call ‘’not productive’’, i consider that the quantity of materials and number of hours spent into creating&operating a yacht for an individual are mostly wasted in comparison to more productive activities. Examples begin with luxury items, maintaining empty houses, cosmetic surgery, extravagant resorts, …, but also include the rents and the speculative activities in finance, real-estate, …, and i’d go as far as pointing at restaurants, gambling, entertainment, ~tourism, cosmetic renovations, short-lived consumer goods, … This wouldn’t mean abolishing them, but if these are forms of consumption, not investments for the future comparable with money/hours spent in infrastructure, energy, machinery, education&research, …, then they should ‘be taxed in priority’/’not have subsidies’ when a state needs money to invest in productive activities.

• productive investments : The trade balance should indicate an import of machinery, specialized components, patents, anything that cannot be built locally yet. Even if they don’t manage to instantly get rid of the raw materials in the exports like Indonesia, they would at least end up with enough machines to (make machines to )become competitive in that export(, and/or, even better, retain a larger benefit if their alliance established a minimum export floor price). Producing( machines) locally instead of importing them would also help because the foreign dollar can be limited/scarce, leading to foreign exchanges shortages/rationing.
  (I.d.k. if it’s interesting, but countries that have so much foreign currency through exports that they decide to convert it into local currency, instead of spending it in imports, will apparently develop the Dutch disease, with an appreciation of their exchange rate causing more competition from foreign brands(, cheaper imports), and less competitiveness abroad(, more expensive exports), to the point that it could hurt their industrialization.)

• debt : These payments also lead to the rationing of a foreign currency needed for industrialization, and as unfair as it is, the poorer you are and the higher your interests become(, at a state level(, source), and at a factories level too(, source)). From 2022 to 2024, developing countries paid $741 billion more in principal&interest than the loans they received during that same period. In 2024, they paid 921 billions of dollars in interest-payments, which represents a 10% increase from 2023. Being in debt doesn’t help in financing 20 years-long industrialization plans, and if higher interest rates lead to a reduction in investments, which lead to a reduction in growth/revenues, then it could be interpreted as an increase in risks justifying even higher interest rates.
  While they can’t create the foreign currency, a partial solution may be to consider that a sovereign state creates its own money, it doesn’t have to borrow it from private banks(, with interests !). To avoid inflation after printing money, you just have to keep the same amount of money in circulation, by destroying it through taxes afterwards. The interesting thing here beyond the absence of interest-payments is that there could be a bit less destruction than money created if you accept a small inflation, at least in (modern monetary )theory.
  Another possible solution could be financial repression, used extensively by the US after WW2.

• tribunals : Last but not least, when governments attempt to reserve raw materials for their domestic industry(, or even just impose a minimum of local-content, or a bias in favour of its national companies), the affected foreign states&corporations will find a way to prevent their sovereign decision, because their trade or investment agreements were written in order to prevent that, and investment tribunals between states&companies, like the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, will judge accordingly. If a state refuses to abide by this decision, the foreigners will withdraw any future investments, restrict their market access, and exert different kind of diplomatic pressure.
  In the successful example of Indonesia above, when it prohibited nickel-ore exports in order to process it domestically, the European Union challenged these measures before the World Trade Organization, which ruled against Indonesia in 2022, who appealed in return, and it hasn’t been resolved yet.
  In 2014, their export tariff for copper began at 25% and was scheduled to rise as high as 60% by the second half of 2016, but that never happened, even the 25% was never applied. What happened is that the mining company Newmont Corporation immediately contacted in 2014 the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, and was so assured to win its case that it withdrew several weeks later after reaching an agreement with the indonesian government, giving them an export tariff rate of only 7.5%, to be lowered if it committed to construct or support indonesian smelters. Other companies like Freeport-McMoRan Incorporation also quickly ended up exporting at 7.5%. It’s not easy.
  When foreign investments are tied with treaties prohibiting domestic-processing policies, they should be revoked as soon as possible, i don’t know how much could be done in this regard, but the future agreements should take the new industrialization policy of the state in mind.

In short, a government would have to :
- adequately assess which manufactured product to make(, each country shouldn’t export the same product, what’s the strategy to obtain a share of the market) ;
- capture a larger share of revenue from their resources without lacking in foreign exchange/money ;
- be able to nurture&monitor[1] these public/private companies(, despite unequal financing conditions, short-term transitional losses, foreign corporations, trade/investment rules, as well as the many (cumulative )advantages of already industrialized regions) ;
- resist domestic[2] and foreign rentier coalitions, up to the point of having a complete ecosystem[3] with an access to foreign consumers ;
- finance decades of suppliers creation, technological learning, infrastructure building, … And, at any point, an opponent may be elected and reverse that policy.
After all that and more, they’d still need to convince foreign retailers to stock their products, and even then they’ll have to compete not only with the local distribution agreements of their competitors, but with their accumulated consumer recognition as well.
[1] : Perhaps that the People’s Republic of China didn’t need the influence/direction of the state to use these foreign investments adequately, but it’s very noticeable that the country which respected the least our advices ended up having the fastest rise, and we’re demonizing/threatening them. South Korea operated an interesting form of state-directed capitalism in the 60s and 70s, which may be useful or even necessary for a successful import-substitution strategy.
[2] : It should at least be clear that national resources shouldn’t end up in the pocket of foreign/local capitalists, but be used entirely for investments, which requires a control over the local private/public companies, and eventually getting rid of foreign companies when they’ve caught up with them. They should expect short-term losses due to the transition, with political opponents to their industrialization probably supported by the west.

I’ll have to try to do better than this thread one day, here’s something more to add to it : https://x.com/i/status/2077367227049767076

(Just in case, here’s the world ranking, from https://www.worldstopexports.com/chocolate-exporters)

The “World commodity export dependence” map at the top of the thread already said that but it’s an example worth including.
Absurd examples would include Nigeria’s exports of crude oil to import refined oil afterwards, or Zambia’s exports of raw copper to import copper-made electric wires.

Out of curiosity, i wanted to know the value we take when we simply manufacture the raw materials bought abroad, so i asked ChatGPT(, most likely not worth reading, but it’s my source for the graph below) :

At one point on the report, it cites three successful counter-examples, so i wanted to see what these countries did, to eventually discover if they did something unorthodox, or anything explaining why they haven’t been followed by other countries :

• Indonesia banned all nickel-ore exports in 2020(, after a first interdiction in 2014), in order to force companies into investing in smelters&‘refining factories’(, public enterprises aren’t a thing anymore, workers-owned enterprises never were, there’s only one way allowed).
  By 2022, they had attracted US$22 billion in foreign direct investment(, i.d.k. how much they’ll have to give them in return).
  The first step would be to develop domestic stainless-steel, then they apparently opted for battery-material, and perhaps eventually electric vehicle industries.
  Each step requires more energy and available jobs in order to receive more money from the same amount of raw materials(, which are much more precious/‘limited on Earth’ than the energy/manpower required for manufacturing).
  Ideally, it seems like only countries without these raw materials should import the corresponding manufactured products.
  Before stainless steel, there’s the intermediary of ferronickel, and it’s a success :
  
  (source)
  There’s not much to add, i’m glad for them, may they don’t stop here and get rid of more and more foreign firms along the years.

• It then cites Botswana for establishing cutting-and-polishing diamond factories, but it’s a bit less inspiring because there’s not much more to do beyond that added value, and synthetic diamonds are coming anyway.
  On a related note, according to contracts, Botswana’s public company has to sell 75% of its diamond production to De Beers at an undisclosed price(, De Beers already owns 50% of this company, and hence of its profits). They recently agreed to progressively reduce this share up to 50%(, source).

• The third example was Côte d’Ivoire, even if it still remains concentrated in intermediate products(, cocoa liquor, butter, powder, …,) instead of consumer brands.
  While cocoa beans are worth ~$2.5/kg, cocoa butter would be sold ~$4.5/kg, filled chocolate bars $5.5/kg, and unfilled bars more than $7/kg.
  As of now, Côte d’Ivoire remains primarily an exporter of beans and semi-processed cocoa, leaving europeans to transform the product for supermarkets.
  (Karl Marx mentioned the oligopsony of oligopoles (source))

I started what ChatGPT presented as counter-examples a bit more hopeful than i ended up with, even if Indonesia’s example was a good one. I probably should have looked into other countries as well, including China.
It didn’t mention the obvious confederation of the Sahel States, but whenever i hear about them it’s usually something linked with climbing the ladder of added value(, e.g. refining their exported gold instead of sending it raw, even if it fortunately doesn’t stop there, the examples are numerous).
In fact, every country has known this kind of stuff for many decades if not centuries, and yet things haven’t changed that much over the last half-century, i’ll try to look a bit more into what’s blocking the transformation in the future…

No trucks here, how could an humble farmer compete with that(, says here that in 11 subsaharan countries, only 18% of the sampled households had access to tractor-powered appliances, while 48% used hand-held tools and 33% used animal-powered equipment, but we’re in competition so why should we do unto them as we’d want others to do unto us, the real world has no mercy, it is not up to us ; at least the poor are innocent).
Also, when the minimum salary in France is 10-20 times the median salary in other countries, then it’s much more expensive for them to buy our manufactured products, and much cheaper for us to buy their mines.
Venezuela didn’t need Chevron/Shell/BP/…, of course, they’re just not allowed to be responsible for 100% of these investments in order to keep 100% of the profits(, nor to become the first socialist country we’re friend with, that’d be way too much of a diverse world for our “morals”), and it’s the same for other countries, sorry.

While we all know the difference between raw materials and final manufactured products, and that this small infographics only represents a part of the difference, i’d like the reader to realize that, when s.he enters a supermarket, s.he’ll usually end up buying products of western companies made from non-western raw material :

Instead of trying to prove what others have already shown(, just have a look at the graphs from the topics of https://globalinequality.org/), i’ve attempted to understand why poor countries continue to export raw materials instead of the final manufactured products(, not having international brands is more of an effect than a cause) :

• tariff escalation : Probably not the kind of tariff escalation you’re thinking about, but this one(, just above that one), here’s a graph(, source). It’s a factor encouraging poor countries to export raw materials, while at the same time protecting the manufactured goods of rich countries.
  As a concrete example :
  - In 2023, France imported ~65.000 tons of raw/green coffee from Brazil and paid $250 millions, so it was sold at $3.8/kg ;
  - We also imported 600 tons of roasted coffee for $3 million, sold at $5/kg, almost a third more(, among the added costs you need ~1.2kg of green coffee to make 1kg of roasted coffee) ;
  - Now, the tariff in the first case is 0%, and 7.5% in the second one(, it’d have been 9% for instant coffee) ;
  - So, the interesting critic here is that the 7.5% tariff isn’t applied to the $1.2 added value between green and roasted coffee, but to the whole 5$(, i.e. ~$0.4, a third of their added value) ;
  - Hence why this 7.5% tariff acts as a 33% for the local enterprises buying green coffee at the market price to export roasted coffee ;
  - As a solution, the UE-Mercosur trade agreement will soon remove this tariff escalation for some processed products including coffee, by bringing them down to the same 0%.

• local opposition : There’s a local oligarchy benefiting from the current situation(, an enumeration/illustration might help to visualize/understand : mine/plantation local owners when these companies aren’t foreign, local capitalists charged with importing/exporting, local partners of foreign companies, local banks, sometimes officials, …). As far as they’re concerned, all goes well in their lives, some may not realize it is their responsibility to create a complete local chain, instead of exporting “their” raw materials ; in the worst case a few may know that, but without caring that wealthy foreigners benefit instead of their fellow country(wo)men.
  Pro-industrialization propaganda may be useful to convince them and the rest of the population(, e.g. : an explanation developed in full once a year, and repeated more shortly multiples times per month ; a prize and publicity for authors publishing (non)fiction books on that topic ; a branch in public research ; (non)fiction films on television ; …). Within years, everyone in the country should know it has become (one of )the main priorit.y.ies of their government.

Well, Călin Georgescu was forbidden from participating in the 2025 elections despite winning the first round, and Nicușor Dan ended up being the romanian president. Then he was/is arrested.

Moldova successively banned the Șor Party in June 2023, the Chance Party in November 2023, the Victory Bloc in 2024, and the Heart of Moldova in September 2025, but as for Ecuador you’ll never hear about that !
« the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc has 26.6%. The Russia-friendly Alternativa Bloc stood at 8.6% and the populist Our Party — which wants “balanced foreign policy” between East and West — has 6.3% », they also banned 18 Russian-language television channels and over 60 internet resources, and restricted access to opposition politicians’ channels on social media and internet platforms, while pro-western media operate in Moldova without restrictions to manipulate the votes.

Hungary is under sanctions. His opponent can do everything it wants now that he won(, he also modified the constitution to force the president into quitting three years earlier). I learned about Poland from Zbigniew Ziobro, who faces 26 charges over the alleged misuse of the Justice Fund, and whose tweet was posted five days before being the subject of an extradition request to the United States.

From 2015 to 2023, the Law and Justice party(, PiS), close with Viktor Orbán, held the power in Poland, but lost in December 2023 to Donald Tusk, much more fiercely anti-Russian, and previously in power from 2007 to 2014.
PiS then had its annual public funding reduced by 40%(, an alleged&contested misuse of state resources during the 2023 campaign).
Then not only did Donald Tusk replaced the management of public television, radio, and the state news agency, but he also placed them in liquidation(, which may not lead to their dismantlement, it’s apparently more of a legal reason/structure to end their independence, their liquidators being appointed directly by the polish government).
Journalists from the conservative, PiS-aligned TV Republika and wPolsce24 have repeatedly been denied accreditation to government press conferences and other official events, and then completely lost their broadcasting licence, their appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court is still pending so they’re allowed to continue broadcasting until then, they’re two large channels, even more in a “news channel” narrower ranking. On the other side, he declared TVN and Polsat as “strategic companies”, so that the ownership of these large private channels can no longer be transferred without government approval, to pro-russian people for instance(, which was the official reason).
The former minister of Justice isn’t the only one persecuted, there were also the former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński in January 2024 with his deputy, and the former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski in July 2024, as well as the former intelligence chief Piotr Pogonowski, and National Bank governor Adam Glapiński.
He fired the National Prosecutor against the decision of the president and the Supreme Court, and since the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland was apparently too favorable to PiS, Tusk’s government just refused to publish any Tribunal’s judgment since March 2024, both institutions have still not resolved this conflict and the Constitutional Tribunal continues to issue judgments that the government refuses to publish(, update : he’s now been suspended, in what some call a coup d’état).
Despite that, in May 2024 the EU ended his article 7 procedure against disobedient member states to exclude them, they also gave Poland €137 billion a few months earlier, you now know the acceptable limits to the left and the right.
(lol, it is fulfilling EU norms, has he not seen where our war against so-called disinformation as defined by our states is heading towards ? Journalists don’t have time to investigate, that’s by design not out of necessity following a diminution of the revenues. Since investigative journalists are fulfilling a public service, a referendum should decide on how much of our taxes should go to them)

Ukraine overthrew Yanukovych with the help of the west, and already started after 2004 to “promote the ukrainian language” by enforcing subtitles, imposing ukrainian in the administration(, reverted in 2012 with Yanukovych), having more and more conflicts with Russia, promoting Stepan Bandera and others, they also launched a witch hunt against their anti-e.u. opponents(, e.g. Borys Kolesnykov). In Moldova, Ilan Shor and others were also attacked before 2014 under what may have been false pretenses.

In Estonia, they went even further by banning 6.1% of their population from voting.
In Latvia, the Harmony party was the main force of opposition but has now virtually disappeared after 2022, even if their leader Nils Ušakovs was already accused of corruption in 2019. And many diverse things against pro-russians

In Bulgaria, they tried to ban the Vazrazhdane party but ended up failing, so it’s now the third political party of the country.
It is good to know that with the Magnitsky Act, the u.s. can just ban pro-russian political candidates from participating. They sanctioned Delyan Peevski and Vasil Bozhkov in 2021, as well as Vladislav Goranov in 2023.
The Magnitsky act was used in other countries of the eastern bloc as well : Aleksandar Vulin in Serbia in 2023, Milorad Dodik in Bosnia from 2022 to 2024, Antal Rogán in Hungary in 2025, Vakhtang Gomelaur in Georgia in 2024, …
The first round of their election has ended recently, with only 23% of voter turnout. Interestingly, Vazrazhdane(, who ended in 3rd position,) campaigned for a stronger direct democracy(, already in 2022, Bulgaria could launch a citizen-initiated referendum after 400.000 signatures, and he wanted to reduce it to 100.000 ; however when they obtained 470.973 signatures in 2023 the parliament refused to launch a referendum, so we’re still quite far from the direct democracy he calls for).

Slovenia jailed the leader of the opposition, Janez Janša, three weeks before the 2014 elections. A decade later, in 2025, he’s acquitted, and has now been re-elected prime minister in 2026.
As in Hungary and Poland, but in 2022, when Robert Golob came into power he ended prematurely the mandate of public radio&television leadership, while firing most employees(, in France we’re still believing that journalists are unbiased/objective instead of aiming for multi-subjectivity/pluralism, not that i’m saying that Slovenia has anti-capitalist&anti-imperialist TV channels, as a result our leftists ask to censor the far-right TV channels instead of asking for the first existence of a far-left TV channel)