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...plunging sales. "There's just been too much noise about all this," grumbles Lepeule. "People are mixing up eating cooked chicken, which is entirely safe, with a highly hypothetical risk of human infection." But the bad news continues. By the end of last week, total or partial import bans on French poultry products had been issued by 43 non-E.U. countries, including Japan, the biggest non-European importer of French foie gras. "There's no health justification for these bans, and the government's working to get them lifted or at least limited to certain regions and products," says...
...Congress has tried in the past to require the original shipper to provide additional information, such as where the container was packed with its cargo. But U.S. retailers who import goods from overseas claim that more disclosure makes such cargo an inviting target for thieves, an argument that has worked so far but doesn't satisfy critics. The problem is, "we don't know whether the manifests are accurate or not when the ships are loaded," says Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who has sponsored legislation to strengthen maritime security. "The containers are not tracked as they come overseas," Murray adds...
...dozen years later, the chief British official in China, Sir John Bowring, coined the dictum: “Free trade is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is free trade.”More earnings from trade were also needed to pay for growing quantities of that essential British import, Chinese tea. In the 1660s, Britain imported some two lbs. of it; by the 1780s that had become 15 million lbs., and by 1830 it was 30 million. To balance this, the British needed to sell more to China—but the Chinese did not want nearly enough of what...
...Hayao Miyazaki: Considered the best in the animation biz, this Japanese filmmaker won for 2002's Spirited Away, and his Disney import Howl's Moving Castle, is up for Best Animated Feature. Yes, another reason to outsource...
...average annual clip. Strong sales in China have cooled the impetus to export. So has the majors' ample capacity at plants overseas. And low wages don't make China a low-cost producer. The country has an inefficient supply chain, high component costs (many parts are slapped with import tariffs) and nonwage expenses like housing for factory workers. CSM's Zhang estimates that materials account for 80% to 85% of a vehicle's cost (vs. 65% in Detroit), eroding much of the labor savings. "It's not particularly cheap to produce a car in China," notes Steven Blackman, head...