"Red" is in! 2

[rhodie]

Imagine the strength of a US economy that was responsible for producing another $18 billion worth of manufactured goods.

Would we be faced with the same economic problems today?

Would the American retail landscape be different?

For your information:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/29/content_395728.htm

 

[buzzp]

Wal-Mart scares me. Since they have come in they have caused many businesses to go under. This is all fine. What is scary is they continue to affect all the other chains and local stores. Pretty soon, they will be the only choice at which time I would expect prices to go up. They raise prices now on some of the hot sellers and cover it up with great prices on other products. And their meat and other fresh goods are not fresh at all. Anyway, I have made a conscious decision a few months ago to not buy from walmart. With this article I am even more inclined not to buy from Walmart, its disgusting.
The US is on a short road to dependancy on other countries. We use to be self sustaining. Whats to happen when there is another world war and all our manufacturing ability is over seas? What then? Do we depend on the very people we may be at war with to supply us with new production equipment? Scary situation.,

 

[HgTX]

On PRI's "Marketplace" radio program (either Nov. 9 or Nov. 16) they did a whole piece on Walmart. They don't just do business directly with Chinese companies, they pressure their US suppliers to move manufacturing to China to keep costs down.

Hg

 

[flamby]

Paradoxically China, two decades back, was a self-sustained, closed-door economy. Moving nowhere, they decided to trade internationally. You are free to draw the conclusions from their successes.

I do not have the figures, but still suggest that Chinese import a lot of services from developed countries, if not goods. What you should be looking at is export-import balance, not just outsourcing as this is not the complete picture.

BFN

 

[buzzp]

They just recently opened their doors somewhat to outside investors. Their internal power grid is worse than ours. With their booming economy this is expected to be and is a major concern. They already have rolling blackouts in Beijing (I believe this is where) amongst other locations.

Many power companies are looking to invest in their infracstructure.

You can not blame a business for going overseas to maintain pricing competitiveness. However, at what point do you draw the line? Certainly, the company will not draw the line at the risk of lost profit. The only cure to this 'outsourcing' issue is to involve the federal government. If nothing else, but for the production capabilities of the United States. The scenario of a war (not just one the US is involved with either but civil wars, etc) affecting our ability to produce goods in a timely fashion is a real concern of mine.

 

[BigH]

Isn't it amazing that you can't buy a tv set made in America? Or steros other than very high end . . . or . . .
I have worked in China. I will tell you that they have a great entreprenurial spirit among the people. And, they like money, and they like the "toys". Many women own their own businesses - it may be selling ice cream from a freezer, but they are working.

 

[BobPE]

BigH:

It is scary that we don't have American TV's. A local glass plat here that dropped picture tubes just went out of business. I sespect many reasons, but two that come to mind are the smoke stack (environmental regs), and China (labor). You would be hard pressed to find much of a stack based industry producing value added materials in the US.

I have no problem with free trade, if it is in fact free. As Buzzup hints to, is China trade really free, or still controlled to a degree as in the past? If profit is the only risk being used to regulate the economic differences between other countries and the US, then we have been sold out and will never be able to gain ground and will continue to loose ground economically untill the system reaches equilibrium...

That will put a lot more Americans in the RED....

BobPE

 

[HgTX]

Fine line between "controlled economy" and "sound economic policy". All the years we should have been doing something to protect ourselves, we did nothing. And entire industries vanished from the US.

Hg

 

[Beggar]

Fair trade with China would include:

+ Trade their currency on the open market, not tie it to the dollar

+ Legalize the workers' rights to organize

+ Adopt some minimum environmental standards

+ End the use of forced labor

Let us not forget that this is a country where the secret police still "disappear" people and confronting the elite wind you up in prison or a work camp.

It's tough for me to see how this is fair trade.

I'm done with WalMart and I only buy China stuff when it's unavoidable (which it often is).

--------------------
Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

--------------------

 

[Beggar]

Let me climb back onto my soap box:

Another thing: How 'bout some protection of intellectual property rights?

--------------------
Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

--------------------

 

[buzzp]

Business guys don't understand that concept. They just as soon hand over all of our secrets to these manufacturers for free. Hell, the mfgs dont even have to pay for the secrests, but I bet they are certainly collecting money from the highest bidder.
Scary, scary, scary.

 

[arunmrao]

Chinese are current in all technologies. They have their own space program,nuclear program etc. There is no technology which is not accesible to them from US today.

Over 90% of Micro soft products used in Chinese government is pirated.

Human rights,business ethics, value systems are minor issues to contend with. Remember the recent SARS scare. The public and the international community were shut off from any information on this.

 

[arunmrao]

rhodie,
You might have had a premonition while starting this thread. The last few days business development indicates that IBM have sold their PC business to Chinese company Lenovo!! Now who has the last laugh. There are nearly 10000 jobs at stake which for the present the Chinese company has agreed to retain. How long?

There are news reports that HP is also planning a similar exit.

Corporate America has only quarterly results on sight and nothing else matters.

I shall stop here before I get bashed up!!

 

[Rich2001]

December 08, Bloomberg — Lenovo buys IBM's PC business for $1.25 billion. Lenovo
Group Ltd. agreed to pay $1.25 billion for International Business Machines Corp.'s personal computer business, making the Chinese company the world's third?largest PC maker and giving it a globally recognized brand. The purchase vaults Lenovo to third from eighth with about seven percent of a $183 billion global market dominated by U.S. manufacturers Dell Inc. and Hewlett?Packard Co. IBM is pulling out of a business it helped create two decades ago to concentrate on services. The acquisition is the biggest of a U.S. company by a mainland Chinese rival. The purchase is also symbolic of the shift in technology manufacturing to Asia, home to the world's two largest consumer? electronics makers and top three digital camera makers. IBM will have an 18.9 percent stake in the Hong Kong?listed company. The companies expect the purchase to be completed in the second quarter of 2005. Much of the world's supply of computers, mobile phones and digital cameras are now manufactured in Asia because of the region's lower costs.
Source:

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=ayacW.

MEKzV8&refer=home

 

[GregLocock]

So let's see. Two high tech companies are getting out of a market dominated by high volume low margin commodity goods.

That does not sound like the end of the world. I'd be far more worried if they had announced they were keeping the PC manufacturing business and selling their microprocessor design facilities.






Cheers

Greg Locock