Now that’s progress!

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade, U.S. Relations at 5:53 pm

Is the Chinese stock market setting itself up for a huge crash? Business Week reports that many Chinese companies are padding their reported earnings with stock market gains. This is a very dangerous sign.

Some global funds are moving away from China and moving towards stocks in Europe.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade at 4:26 pm

Find Chinese suppliers using Alibaba.com. Fortune has a profile on the company’s founder, Jack Ma, and his tremendous successes with online companies.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Manufacturing, Trade at 4:23 pm

China was looking at U.S. banks even before the latest write-downs. Now that trend is accelerating.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade at 3:55 pm

The lead paint scandal took a tragic turn as the Chinese factory owner at the center of this controversy has committed suicide.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is trying to pass some of the blame to the exporters and US companies who accepted the products.

So many American companies transferred manufacturing to China to save money, and retailers like Wal-Mart encouraged this strategy. Now they are paying the price.

We take for granted the numerous regulations in the US designed to protect us. We’re now seeing the risks of outsourcing. Of course outsourcing a trade will continue, but relying on Chinese components and products just got a little costlier.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Manufacturing, Trade at 6:27 am

Business Week reports that the U.S. crackdown on Chinese paper exports might have more to do with helping some well-connected private equity firms than broad U.S. interests.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Manufacturing, Trade, U.S. Relations at 9:17 pm

Can China compete in the airline production business against Boeing and Airbus? It will be interesting to watch this develop. China is purchasing tons of planes and wants to have domestic production for the future. This will test their capabilities, because their low wage advantage is less important in this industry.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Manufacturing, Technology, Trade at 1:25 pm

The Chinese stock market is going through a serious correction, and it’s dragging down U.S. stocks as well.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Monetary Policy, Trade, U.S. Relations at 6:04 pm

News Corp. not doing well in China:

Not sure if this was Murdoch trying to manage expectations but he was emphatic about the difficulties News Corp. faces in China, especially with MySpace. “We don’t do very well in China. … All I would say there is that nobody—and I challenge anyone to argue this—nobody, none of the American media companies or British media companies have made any impact there yet. … It is a vast market, but it is certainly a very, very sensitive one and as we have seen what happened to Google there and what happened to eBay there, it is very difficult, even to—to Yahoo, it is a very difficult market for outsiders.”

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade at 10:48 am

. . . but it might take a while.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Manufacturing, Trade, U.S. Relations at 4:03 pm