How can we talk big when we are losing to Vietnam?

"High export growth rate is crucial for India's goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025," wrote Ram Singh. "The current slowdown has made the objective more challenging, with India's exports having shrunk 6.57% in September." Why? "The main culprits are the non-tariff barriers and administrative hurdles faced by Indian exporters such as difficulty in quality and specification certificates, and time consuming customs clearances, just to name a couple." The US-China trade war seems to be in suspended animation as talks go on but US markets and oil prices fell yesterday because of pessimism over resolution of disputes. "Several economists and analysts predicted that India would be primary beneficiary of the biggest trade war of this millennium," wrote Frank F Islam. "More than a year later these predictions have not panned out." "In 2018, the trade in goods between India and the United States was $87.9 billion, up from $74.2 billion in 2017." Vietnam, a small country with a population of just 92 million ruled by its Communist Party, has gained the most from the trade war. India has lost out because our manufacturing infrastructure cannot compete with China, Japan or South Korea and our manufacturing output was $300 billion last year, compared to China's $2 trillion, less than a third of Japan and less than half of Germany. India levied tit-for-tat tariffs on US goods in June this year and last year suddenly changed rules of e-commerce after Walmart bought Flipkart for $16 billion and paid Rs 74.39 billion in taxes on the deal. Naturally, "the US voiced displeasure with two new Indian regulations that affect US credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard, and e-commerce giants Amazon and Walmart". "Usually, countries keep import duty low on Key Industrial Raw Materials (KRMs) and high on Value Added Products (VAPs). This gives domestic producers the freedom to buy the cheapest KRMs from any country and focus their energy on making VAPs," wrote A Srivastava. "High duty on steel and low duty on equipment made from steel puts equipment manufacturers under strain." This Inverted Duty Structure (IDS) "explains why so many of our large firms are making primary products, but very few large firms making VAPs". Even a high level government panel blamed protectionist policies for our poor exports. CEO of Walmart has written to the Prime Minister requesting a stable business environment, which means no sudden change in tax rules. To add to our misery, the WTO has ruled against India on a complaint on export subsidies by the US. Which will allow the US to increase tariffs on our exports. What is achieved by increasing prices by taxing the hell out of products and then providing subsidies for exports is a complete mystery. No wonder, they need the brutal British sedition law to keep people from holding them criminally responsible. Do we deserve this lot?