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...produce Z4 roadsters and X5 SUVs. Detroit's automakers are by no means sitting still, as we'll see, but the additional transplant capacity can only make their challenge harder. "The Big Three are less in denial than they used to be, but I can't see anything causing import market-share gains to take a downturn," says Bear Stearns analyst Domenic Martilotti. "A fifty-fifty share split is certainly within reason." Here's what Detroit is up against...
...intrepid companies like Chinaveg are doing with farming what's already been done in manufacturing: leveraging China's cheap labor and growing domestic market to build a low-cost export operation. The best potential profits lie outside China, especially in Japan, which imports more than $3 billion in agricultural products annually, and in South Korea, which will ease its import restrictions in 2004. China already ranks as Japan's No. 1 source of imported fresh vegetables (the U.S. ranks second) and is No. 2 in processed fruits and vegetables (after...
Magadanskaya, the vodka served by Stalin to Truman and Churchill at Potsdam, is smooth and bracing. A sip makes Robert Plotkin of BarMedia, a well-known consultant, say, "Oh, my goodness." But it tastes like ... vodka. Its importer, Sylvia Scherer, of West Import & Export in Kenai, Alaska, is marooned near the back of the hall, far from big corporate booths pushing Stoli Cranberi vodka and Tarantula Azul tequila. Scherer struggles to nail down distribution beyond Alaska, California and Georgia. "One of these days everybody's going to discover us," she says. For now, she swims against a purple, berry-flavored...
These were whiffs of change rather than full-blown breakthroughs, and there were those who discounted their import. The North Koreans had succumbed, it was said, only because of pressure from China and some folding by the U.S. on who should be at the table. Skeptics insisted that Rafsanjani was just playing local politics; he was hoping to reinvigorate his flagging, centrist political party for next year's parliamentary elections by appealing to Iran's pro-American, pro-reform majority. But make no mistake: none of this would be happening were it not for George W. Bush. He invented...
Coffee is the second largest import to the U.S. after oil, and the country consumes one-fifth of all the coffee produced worldwide—making it the largest consumer in the world. Yet despite our surmountable influence in the market, few Americans realize that their consumer choices can adversely affect coffee farmers who often go underpaid for their work. Many small coffee farmers rely on intermediates to buy and bundle their individual crops to sell to larger corporations. But these middlemen pay farmers incredibly low rates for their harvests—at prices that are often less than...