Word: cheaping
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...legged stool. In a perfect example of globalization at work, ferocious competition from Chinese manufacturers is snatching away Manzano's customers--and its life. Over the past three years, about 200 Manzano companies have closed, and a worrisome number of the remaining 900 are struggling. The cheap labor isn't just in China. Sawmills have moved to Croatia, Poland and Romania, where an increasing amount of prefabrication is carried...
...revealed truth. Those who gain from trade?the great undifferentiated mass of consumers who enjoy a range of products from around the world sold at prices that reflect intense competition?are by definition less identifiable than those who lose from it. Nobody lobbies a legislature to thank them for cheap T shirts; any group of workers in the industrialized world whose job has just been "lost" to China's Pearl River Delta can be assured of a hearing on the evening news. And just as in the 1980s, when U.S. legislators had panic attacks after Japanese investors overpaid for everything...
Take Japan. Public demos proved a perfect vehicle for product exposure in that densely populated country. HSL rolled out Heelys in brighter colors and produced Hello Kitty and Winnie the Pooh models to take advantage of local licensing agreements. But success spawned cheap copies, slicing HSL's monopoly market share in half. In a neat bit of counterprogramming, however, its man in Japan recommended fighting the pirates on their turf: self-serve discounters. So HSL created Cruz, a lower-priced sub-brand, exclusively for Japan...
...increasing domination of U.S. policy by the hunger for cheap oil in a world of dwindling supplies, which has led in turn to an obsession with projecting U.S. power across the endlessly volatile Middle East. Another is the spectacle of a Republican Party seriously under the sway of Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy, a reading of Scripture that inspires them to apocalyptic obsessions with that same part of the world. Finally, there's the headlong growth of American debt of all kinds--household spending, a massive trade gap and a federal deficit that leaves American policy susceptible...
China has been in the furniture business for a while. The Pearl River delta, in the south of the nation, has supplied the world with cheap beds and dressers for decades. But more recently, as new Chinese homeowners have swelled domestic demand, the industry has spread to other parts of the country. Now manufacturers are crafting increasingly sophisticated wares that allow China to compete in markets once dominated by Europe. Last year China exported $13.77 billion worth of furniture, overtaking Italy as the world's leading exporter. "At the beginning, you could never get the right quality in China," says...