Quote:
Originally Posted by SF  ablium, care e punctul tau de vedere vizavi de limita impusa importurilor din China?
Nu esti de parere ca prea multe importuri vor afecta producatorii interni? |
According to the original agreement of WTO (World Trade Organization), the global textile quote was supposed to be lifted in 2005. However, rise of Chinese textile export to EU and US was faster than expected, which lead to re-negotiation of the quota. According to the new agreement, the quota will be lifted in two years, if I remember correctly.
At present, Chinese annual export of textile and apparel is at about $150 billions, roughly 15% of total Chinese export. The percentage of textile export in total Chinese export is declining. China has built huge textile industry capacity. I think that Chinese textile industry will still be competitive even Chinese currency appreciates 50%. This year, Chinese export is expected to reach $960 billions, with surplus of $150 billions. Within three years, it is expected that China will emerge as world top exporter. China certainly would like the textile quota lifted. However, the huge trade surplus with US and EU has escalated trade friction with US and EU. The foreign exchange reserve of China has reached one trillion dollars now, which no other countries have ever achieved. I don’t think that it is in the best of the interest of China to allow the reserve to rise further. So I would like to see the Chinese currency to make a significant appreciation to balance the trade.
Within the EU, the opinions about the textile quota are divided. Northern European countries and Germany do not necessarily support the quota. Southern European countries including Italy, Spain, and supposedly Romania too after 2007, are traditional textile makers and would certainly like to have quota imposed. No doubt, Chinese competition in textile and footwear has posed strong challenge for these Southern European countries. European strength in textile and apparel is their brand, design, and control of fashion trend, but not in manufacture and cost structure. In America, I rarely see European apparel. Americans are casual and sloppy. Few Americans dress in suit. Americans care more in comfort than fashion or brand. The standard dress in Silicon Valley is khaki trouser or jeans and cotton Polo shirt. In Japan, almost every man wears nice suits at work. Textile quota system can work in short term to protect European textile industry, but I don’t think that it will work in long term unless current globalization trend reverses and global trade system collapses, which is extremely unlikely. Levis Strauss (the inventor blue jeans, headquartered in San Francisco) had to close its last factory in US a few years ago and move the production to Mexico. I think that European textile companies should focus on brand, design, fashion trend, and distribution.
The other way for European economy to compete is move away from the textile industry to more technology-intensive sector. Unfortunately, most European countries are not doing very well in this direction. Japan used to be a big textile exporter in 1960s, South Korea and Taiwan used to be big textile exporter in 1970s and 1980s. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have now moved away from textile industry to more technology-intensive sectors. Among major European economies, Germany is probably the only one that is strongly positioned against Chinese competition. I really admire Germany. Its current export is higher than US and China despite of much smaller land size and population. Even Japanese can not shake the status of Mercedes and BMW. I think that, for a quite long period, Chinese can not touch several industrial sectors that are dominated by German. By the way, the technology of the world first commercial Maglev train in Shanghai was supplied by Siemens of Germany. (There is a thread talking about Romanian immigration to UK. Has Germany opened its labor market for Romanians?)
East Europe has many talents. The west Europe should use these talents well to improve its competitiveness in the new industries. I recently saw the ranking of topcoder contest (worldwide computer programming contest), the East European countries beat China and performed much better than India.
TopCoder Statistics - Top Ranked Countries
In 1980s, Americans were very scared about the industrial competition of Japan. US media often showed “X” curves to indicate the trend, American decline ( \ in the X curves) and Japan rise ( / in the X curves). But in the 1990s, Americans reversed the trend in the emerging industries, such as PC, internet, networking, and software. Behind the American success in 1990s, there are a lot of hard works of foreign-born talents. I also believe that East Europe can also create world class companies in the new industries if sufficient capital is injected and management expertise is introduced.