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Asad Baig //DAWN: April 19, 2025
ON the morning of April 5, 2025, traders at the New York Stock Exchange were glued to their screens as Apple’s stock nosedived nearly five per cent in an hour.
Tesla had already fallen 7pc the day before, and Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet were not far behind. In just three days, nearly $2 trillion in market value was wiped from America’s largest tech firms.
The crash wasn’t triggered by a product flop or a bad earnings report. President Donald Trump had just announced sweeping new tariffs, 10pc on all imports, with steep penalties for key trading partners, including China, India and Vietnam. For Big Tech, which relies on deeply interwoven global supply chains, the blow was immediate and brutal. The markets did not just react; they imploded.
Previous tariff announcements have rattled Wall Street, but this one is different. The scope, timing and targets threaten to fundamentally reshape how global tech operates. This wasn’t just an economic hiccup; it was a structural tremor. Apple’s iPhone, which depends on Chinese and Vietnamese factories, is now caught between rising input costs and collapsing margins. Analysts warn a flagship iPhone could soon cost more than $2,300. And Apple is just one node in a vast ecosystem.
Meta, Google and Amazon also lean heavily on Asian manufacturing for hardware, including VR devices, server racks, even cloud infrastructure. Tesla’s electric vehicles rely on components from India and China. And in the world of AI, where cutting-edge development depends on GPUs and servers often sourced from the same region, the consequences are especially severe. Tariffs on key computing parts are expected to raise development costs by more than a third, a surge that could cripple smaller labs and delay innovation at even the largest ones.
Ironically, while the tariffs are meant to curb China’s tech rise, they may be undercutting America’s own dominance. Big Tech’s strength has long rested on low trade barriers, cheap offshore production and frictionless global logistics. That model is now being dismantled in real time. Investors are no longer just reacting to earnings; they’re questioning the future of an entire industry’s structure.
The deeper damage may hit Pakistan’s fledgling AI and tech development ecosystem.
At a time when the US is racing against China for dominance in AI, the tariffs may be inflicting damage on America’s own momentum. AI development is built on GPUs, servers and high-performance computing systems, many of which are assembled or sourced from Asia.
While some advanced semiconductors have been given temporary exemptions, the broader ecosystem has not. Tariffs on GPUs alone are expected to spike development costs by as much as 35pc, which could cripple smaller AI startups and dramatically slow progress at larger labs.
The irony here is painful: in trying to weaken China’s tech rise, the US may end up kneecapping its own, and the market knows it. The $2 trillion erased was most likely a warning shot. Investors are not just worried about short-term earnings; they are rethinking the long-term profitability of Big Tech’s legacy business models.
The consequences are not contained within the US or China. In developing countries like Pakistan, which import nearly all their consumer tech and depend on global platforms to build digital capacity, the knock-on effects will be swift and severe. When Apple raises prices, when GPUs and cloud infrastructure become harder to source, the tremors reach straight into Pakistani homes, startups, classrooms, and servers.
Already saddled with local import duties and regulatory bottlenecks, Pakistani consumers face even steeper prices for smartphones, laptops and digital tools. But the deeper damage may hit the country’s fledgling AI and tech development ecosystem. Many local developers and researchers depend on access to global platforms, open-source models and affordable compute. As costs soar, those doors begin to close.
This creates a dangerous paradox: just as Pakistan attempts to digitise its economy, integrate AI into sectors like healthcare and education and foster homegrown innovation, the tools to do so become more expensive and less accessible. What follows is not just a tech slowdown, but the risk of falling into deeper digital dependency, reliant on imported AI services and locked out of the development loop.
Pakistan, of course, is not a player in the tech trade war. But it is caught in its crossfire. Tariff-driven supply chain shock may feel distant to some, but its results will show up in Pakistan’s stalled cloud deployments, paused AI experiments and shrinking startup runway. And as global companies restructure operations, smaller markets risk being deprioritised entirely.
Yet amidst the disruption, there is a sliver of opportunity. As tech giants look to de-risk from China and diversify their operations, Pakistan could insert itself not by mimicking China’s production scale, but by offering value in other ways. With a young, tech-savvy population and competitive labour costs, Pakistan can position itself as a digital services and backend talent hub for overstretched AI labs and global startups. But this won’t happen by default.
To seize this rather narrow window of opportunity, Pakistan needs to invest urgently and seriously in its human capital. That means prioritising technical education, scaling AI training programmes and subsidising access to computing infrastructure for universities, startups and freelancers alike. Without these fundamentals, the country risks becoming a spectator to a race it should be trying to run in.
Of course, all of this would require actual digital policymaking; something far more ambitious and conducive than criminalising misinformation through the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act and suspending X.
If we want to be a part of the global tech shift, we will have to do away with predatory laws and vague digital agendas. We need policies that enable infrastructure, promote learning and encourage innovation. As opposed to treating the internet as a threat to be contained, we need to look at it as a platform to be built upon.
Disruption is destabilising, but it also clears the way for new alignments. If the global tech order is being reshuffled, countries like Pakistan may have a chance to find new footing. The window may be narrow, but the cost of inaction is far wider.
The writer is the founder of Media Matters for Democracy.
Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2025
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Rafia Zakaria Published April 19, 2025
“FEMINISM convinced women they could have it all. Now they’re 40, independent and crying in a very nice empty apartment.” So wrote Nandi on X.
The response was swift as the ‘feminists’ that Nandi was taking issue with responded. “See sis,” wrote one “I’d rather cry in an apartment which I own than in one which I can be kicked out because the man bought it.” Another wrote: “…if you have a very nice apartment of your own when you’re 40 in this economy, that’s a well-played game of life and the privilege to cry in that apartment, wow.”
One of the best responses (among a huge number of them) simply stated: “Funny how people blame feminism for women ‘crying’ in nice apartments, but never blame patriarchy for women crying in marriages, bedrooms and kitchens, they were told would complete them.”
It is true that the very word ‘feminism’ raises the hackles of many — including women — when it is used. Weighed down by the accrued moral and historical baggage of being associated with Westernisation, colonial dominance and white supremacy, it is easy to hold up a word as the progenitor of all that is wrong with gender relations in modern society.
This is particularly so in the South Asian context where the entrenchment of patriarchy is such that women are even more eager to shut down other women who are fighting for basic equality and respect at the hands of social, cultural and political institutions. Nothing, it appears, endears women to chauvinistic men more than the former’s amenability to criticising their own. Hating women together is the glue of many a relationship.
This X kerfuffle over the feminist contribution to female loneliness took place within a context where women are increasingly financially independent and living alone. Pakistan is far behind in this regard; its flailing economy is often subject to the vagaries of whatever political order is having its moment in the sun, and simply does not provide the volume of opportunities that would ensure a strong middle class.
However, while one cannot see a mass upsurge in the numbers of financially independent women who can support themselves, their numbers are increasing even in Pakistan. The increase in urbanisation in recent years, along with educational opportunities for women, means that the financially independent and voluntarily single professional woman is no longer the oddity she once was.
Women in Pakistan grow up surrounded by the critical and toxic perspectives of everyone around them.
Some of these women have taken to social media to chronicle what it is like to live alone as a woman in cities such as Karachi and Lahore. One of them, whom I watch regularly, begins every reel she posts on Instagram with a reminder that living by herself was always her dream. While she has not provided much of an explanation of why living by herself was her dream, it is not difficult to guess the reason.
Women in Pakistan grow up surrounded by the critical and toxic perspectives of everyone around them. As one of the respondents on X put it, the image of crying women is etched in our minds because women, by and large, still live a subservient and miserable existence pressed into the service of others. When one considers the drudgery of repetitive housework, the scolding of husbands and other relatives and the thanklessness of it all, it doesn’t take much to realise that living in an apartment alone is like a tropical beach vacation in comparison.
A glimpse into the lives of women living alone in Pakistan also dispels the myth that being alone automatically means being lonely. Social media content about their lives reveals that they eat, sleep, cook and clean according to their own schedules and convenience. There is time to enjoy a cup of tea and one’s inner contentment and peace are not being constantly disturbed by the vagaries of other people’s moods, needs, and demands. Most women in Pakistan spend all their lives entrapped by these forces; naturally the few who can escape are grateful for the reprieve.
This is not to say that the world, like our friend Nandi on X, is not up in arms to criticise the increasing numbers of women living alone. The solitary woman of their imagination is financially comfortable but emotionally bereft, essentially crying alone. These sorts of statements are part of the sociocultural backlash against women having this kind of autonomy. Society does not look kindly on women who choose paths that are not the usual that have been prescribed for them, ie, marriage and kids and family maintenance. This interpretation of the solitary woman as a ‘bechari’ is popularised as an added burden to the other obstacles already put in their way.
Interviews with women living alone in Pakistan reveal the problems they have renting apartments, getting cars fixed, and dealing with nosy neighbours and relatives. A woman living alone, after all, is a testament to the fact that women do not need men in order to live. And in a male-dominated society, where women are second-class citizens, such a testament is unacceptable in all circumstances.
The waves of change have a way of upending the status quo. The beginnings of change and the fact that there are Pakistani women out there who are living alone and are even willing to share how normal and enjoyable their experiences show that the old ways are slowly disintegrating.
This does not mean that all women should aspire to live alone for their entire lives. Instead, it shows that when the opportunity to live alone and independently presents itself, it can be looked at as an enjoyable and peaceful time of contentment and freedom.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2025
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DAWN EDITORIAL: 19 April 2025
PAKISTAN’S sputtering democracy finally seems to have stalled. It had been evident for the past few years that the nation would soon arrive at a crippling deadlock unless one of the many protagonists in the ongoing political saga decided to take a step back.
In the absence of any serious effort towards a drawdown, the political system has now completely lost steam. The question of what comes next should cause a fair bit of unease. Divided and conquered, the political leaders who have long steered the country find themselves at a loss.
Those in power cannot face the public, and those out of power cannot make anything of the public’s support. They have mutually surrendered the state to unelected, unaccountable quarters. As a result, the judiciary has fallen, the executive has been compromised, and the legislature rendered almost redundant. Shut out, the ordinary citizens of Pakistan have no one to turn to for their problems.
‘A government of the few, by the few, for the few.’
There is no escaping that label. The Pakistani political system has been soulless for so long that even the staunchest democrats have been complacent about the country’s descent into totalitarianism. Politicians’ refusal to talk to each other and resolve issues with negotiation has created space for a different type of rulership to take over.
Even now, with KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur recently stating that PTI chief Imran Khan is ready for talks, ‘not for his sake, but for the sake of the country’, it is known that that proposition is a non-starter. Mr Khan obviously does not want those talks with his fellow politicians, and his fellow politicians therefore see no option but to assert themselves more forcefully so they may keep holding onto their power. Pakistan may need democracy, but no one really seems to want it.
The Machiavellian approach taken by the coalition government has seen it cross many lines that should never have been crossed. There is much strength in the criticism that it seems to exist solely to serve vested interests, and one day it must be held to account for the extensive damage it has caused.
At the same time, the PTI, the main party in opposition, also has a lot to answer for. The party has never felt any responsibility for leading the country down the path of bitter divisiveness and polarisation, and it has often wielded its influence with a dangerous recklessness, frequently crossing the bounds of reason. It is its constant belligerence that turned politics into a zero-sum game where opponents deserve no respect or consideration.
It is important that both sides acknowledge their faults and make amends. This country has seen more than its fair share of misery. It deserves better.
Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2025
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