EU spells out trade threat from China

Telegraph ^

[A CA Guy]

When you own nothing and everything is under price control, I guess you could live on nearly air officially.
Your quality of life is horrible, but not having anything, you wouldn't know it.

There is a lot of oppression there. A friend there in China saw some guy who stoled a purse from a tourist get his hands cut off last year.

Plus they are aborting daughters all over the place.

[adam_az]

" Plus they are aborting daughters all over the place."

Just wait until the Chicoms learn that they can be a cash crop to export to Saudi Arabia... in exchange for oil.

[maine-iac7]

China will dominate the high-tech industry in less than ten years at the current pace

and they can thank clintoooon for all his help in giving them the technology etc...in return for beaucoup campaign bucks - illegal, but okay if a dim

[snowsislander]

I think that the report is worth reading in the original; Mr. Pritchard-Evans' article is too short to do justice to the original report. The section on China starts on page 302 and goes through page 354. I found the writing style quite approachable.

[A CA Guy]

You would think China has a load of oil under itself anyway.

[Polybius]

The Commission blamed much of Europe's sluggish performance on suffocating red tape.

Funny how Red China is now less socialistic than the European Union. ;-)

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

I don't think outsourcing is as big a deal as it's made out to be.

Thats insane thinking. If I have a company of 50 workers making...well...anything from electronics to toys and I have to pay my workers salarys and insurance and taxes which comes up to...I dunno, lets say $700,000 /year.

But I can make these products in India or China for HALF the labor costs and provide NO insurance and benefits then WHY in gods name would I make the products here in this country or Europe?

[Brilliant]

Yes, there is no reason you'd pay your workers more to make toys here instead of having them made in China. So what? There are certain things that we can make in this country, but which we can buy more cheaply overseas. We don't need to make those toys here, and those workers are better utilized producing something else that we can't buy more cheaply from China, like heavy equipment, airplanes or tall buildings.

[JeffersonRepublic.com]

Europe is in trouble. The fall of the dollar and the yuan, is going to be their down fall. Currently their economies have stopped growing, their products are overpriced and the quality of their products are crap.

[azhenfud]

"Red flags going up all over it seems."

Yep - with little gold stars....

[Happy2BMe]

Wal-Mart's China inventory to hit US$18b this year

Posted by The Loan Arranger On News/Activism 11/29/2004 11:23:23 PM PST · 55 replies · 458+ views China Daily ^ | November 29, 2004 | Jiang Jingjing The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, says its inventory of stock produced in China is expected to hit US$18 billion this year, keeping the annual growth rate of over 20 per cent consistent over two years. The trend is expected to continue, company officials revealed. "We expect our procurement stock from China to continue to grow at a similar rate in line with Wal-Mart's growth worldwide, if not faster," said Lee Scott, the president and CEO (chief executive officer) of Wal-Mart. An unnamed company official also stated the firm will extend its procurement base from South China's Pearl River...

[shellshocked]

""We expect our procurement stock from China to continue to grow at a similar rate in line with Wal-Mart's growth worldwide,"

Let them sell their cheap products overseas, not here.

[shellshocked]

Wal-Marts Child Labor Violations

[snip]

Globalizing Poverty Through The World Trade Organization

 

• Bangladesh, Beximco factory--Young women making Wal-mart shirts forced to work from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week, 87 hours a week

   

• Paid 9 to 20 cents and hour for 80 hours--lunch break is unpaid. And paid less than one-third the legal overtime rate

   

• No health care--No maternity leave

   

• Wal-Mart and Beximco are violating Bangladeshi labor law which sets the workweek at 48 hours and limits overtime to 12 hours a week, while also requiring overtime pay at double the standard hourly rate

[Happy2BMe]

Wal-Mart denies everything.

[international american]

You are correct, and almost nobody knows or cares.

[Socrates1]

When you can use slave wages to compete against regular wages, the regular paying jobs lose

In the particular case of cars, they already were in critical condition. Several weeks ago there was a post about GM's Opel operation in Germany that wanted to shut down some plants and consolidate, in an attempt to regain profitability.

German "worker rights" laws blocked the consolidation, claiming some workers would lose jobs. They mandated that Opel keep the existing operation going, virtually guaranteeing additional losses; protecting worker's "rights" to a job, regardless of the actual economic consequences to Opel

Slave wages or not, Opel was in critical condition, terminally ill, but the Germans were only interested in the worker. This simply made it far more difficult to "compete" with a lower cost producer.

While they may be "slave wages" to you, but I'd bet the Chinese workers don't agree. Government regulations and worker's rights universally raise prices, so any economy that doesn't "overburden" corporations will win in the long run.

We, of all people should have figured that out by now. Expecting corporate altruism is unrealistic, because self-sacrifice becomes suicide if fully implemented.

It takes some very special circumstances for one to be willing to die for the sake of others, and business relationships fail to meet that qualification.

The requirement for one to make (unilateral) sacrifices for others, is anti-freedom, and is a special form of slavery.

That requirement went out of vogue with the Aztecs (ultimate altruism), and later during the Civil War (coerced altruism)

[however1]

One of the reasons that Euros want to sell weapons to China. To balance the dificit.

[A CA Guy]

I have lawyer friends who deal with car manufacturer CEOs by way of handling their estate planning. This year they are all saying the only car company that has been profitable was TOYOTA.
So, yep, I believe the Germany story and I know it is bad.