350,000 jobs in the balance and the Duma legalizes smuggling
“Hello! We have decided to show you only the products that can be purchased in your country. It’s bad to see things you can’t buy, isn’t it? ‘ The British online shopping portal ASOS makes fun of Russian users, who every day see another piece of the consumption they have become accustomed to disappear. On Friday it was the turn of the gaming licenses NVIDIA and the French manufacturer of security software for electronic payment systems Thales, who announced the exit from the Russian market. Meanwhile, the queues at Ikea stores, closed since March, are back: the Swedish giant is selling off its warehouses. For now, the liquidation is only accessible to former employees, and pending the opening of online sales even to mere mortals, anxious consumers are trying to grab the most coveted products before they disappear forever: in online markets such as Wildberries and Avito a set of plastic containers costs at least 20 euros, a pine chest of drawers more than 100 euros, a chair 200, and the legendary Blahaj plush shark also reaches 280 euros, a price raised by collectors who consider it the symbol of an era of globalist consumerism now over.
In fact, 58% of the foreign companies surveyed in Russia by the Yale management school have already left the Russian market or suspended their activities: these are 1200 companies, to which the alcoholic giant Diageo, the Michelin, the Finnish elevator manufacturer Kone and Whirlpool. Someone sells the business to Russian competitors or local managers, as McDonalds did, reopening with the self-sufficient brand “Buono e punto” and the less self-sufficient sandwiches that have changed their name (some even claim the flavor) from the Anglo-Saxons “” Big Tasty “to not much more Russian “Big Special”. Some – such as Philip Morris – have not yet succeeded due to a lack of buyers, others have simply frozen their activities, many under consumer pressure: according to a BBC survey, 50% of consumers questioned in 14 countries its purchase decisions of the position taken by the brands towards the war in Ukraine. But there is also a more pragmatic calculation: Yale researchers estimated that the companies that closed the Russian market lost much less on the stock exchange than those that remained, on average 3% instead of 12.6. One of the reasons is that Russia did not constitute large slices of the international market (from one to 3% for the majority of brands), and while withdrawing immediately means limiting the losses to 2022, staying, especially with industrial structures, in the eyes of the analysts increase the risks, especially after the nationalization of the Sakhalin-2 gas consortium ordered by Putin.
The result is about 350,000 workers on the verge of unemployment, with repercussions that could affect several million jobs. However, this is only the calculation of direct employees of foreign companies, which does not take into account the devastating impact of the sanctions, and the boycott of Russia that Western companies have launched of their own will – on the entire production chain. The most dramatic data comes from the automotive sector: the State Statistics Committee reported that the production of cars compared to May 2021 recorded a 97% fall in May 2022. In other words, the assembly lines are at a standstill: in one month, only three thousand vehicles were produced in Russia, which are not approved for use outside Russia and Belarus, lacking the most basic safety devices such as airbags and belts. retractable.
In an attempt to remedy this, the Duma approved the law on “parallel imports” with an accelerated procedure, which essentially legitimizes smuggling. But aside from the fact that this “legalization” is only valid in Russia, while it remains an international crime, exemption of large international producers not only takes away wages and taxes from Russia, but inevitably raises prices, making many goods the import of goods and spare parts through third countries and with “gray” schemes increases difficulty and prices. An investigation by the Kommersant newspaper revealed, for example, that the repair times for mobile phones and computers have already increased from 5 days to two to three weeks: the gadgets must be shipped abroad. A procedure that also dramatically increases costs, and makes a series of consumption impossible for the middle class, despite the fact that the ruble kept artificially high theoretically increases their purchasing power.
Hope in China is also proving thin: after the collapse of imports of Chinese smartphones and tablets after the start of the war, Huawei has announced the gradual closure of its stores in Russia. And so, while the absence of foreign technologies is blocking several strategic sectors, from healthcare (where there is a shortage of drugs and even examination plates) to agri-food, the Russian 007s are being asked to steal technological secrets in the West. A mission that was commissioned by Vladimir Putin himself: visiting the headquarters of foreign espionage, he recalled the industrial espionage of the Soviet era, “returned to the fore today with the sanctions”
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