China only interested in commodities, not in products that reach supermarkets
Trade with China for Argentina has great opportunities but also great threats because the Asian giant is only interested in produce with no added value, warned the head of Argentina’s Industrial Union, Ignacio De Mendiguren.
“Trade with China has opportunities and threats. We must not fall into the temptation of limiting exports to commodities. Let us understand that in this growth cycle so favourable for Argentina, it should help us boost development”, said De Mendiguren during a chat with foreign correspondents in Buenos Aires.
It is clear that for China, “the added value must be incorporated in China” said the Argentine lobbyist and called for the diversification of trade with countries prepared to buy goods with more added value.
“China wants the soy bean, not even soy oil or soy flour and it is legitimate. That is why we must re-direction our trade to all those countries with middle classes that can purchase out goods but at the supermarket. China does not want Argentine products in their supermarkets”, underlined De Mendiguren.
China has become the second partner for Argentine exports but the first for agriculture sales such as soybeans. Bilateral trade was 14.8 billion dollars in 2011 according to official data with a strong deficit for Argentina, which jumped from a red 1.85 billion dollars in 2009 to another red of 4.4 billion in 2010.
Argentina is the world’s third exporter of soy beans and the first of soy-oil and soy-flour.
Last June Argentina and China signed cooperation agreements in nuclear energy as well as agriculture and fisheries during a visit to the region of Primer Minister Wen Jiabao.
A few days later at a Mercosur summit in Mendoza, Argentina the group did not support the Wen Jiabao proposal to create a free trade zone between China and the group made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and now Venezuela.
However there was an understanding to try and reach 200 billion dollars in bilateral trade between Mercosur and China by 2016, which is double that of 2010.
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48 comments Feed
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Europe and America have closed their manufacturing industries down and exported the manufacturing to China where it can be done more cheaply.
Multi nationals can make bigger profits as the labour force in China work for less, have no health and safety provisions or any benefits that the more developed nations workers have striven for over the centuries.
Neither does China want soy oil - this would put its own workers out of employment because of the over-provision of pressing factories and refineries.
It's a bit like Monopoly, where one player owns all the Hotels and the other has nothing to play with.
Life is unfair, but it keeps you on your toes.
I've no idea whether my screws and hammock-hooks were Mercosur imports from Argentina or were 'home-made', but the screws were un-tempered soft metal (unfit for purpose) and the hammock-hooks were 'silvered' mild-steel masquerading as 'stainless'. Net result .... collapse and an x-ray revealing a broken coccyx. Just one example of 3rd world quality-control.
No, China has no interest in such manufacture.
A few days later at a Mercosur summit in Mendoza, Argentina the group did not support the Wen Jiabao proposal to create a free trade zone between China and the group made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and now Venezuela.
lol
i thought Mercosur was one big happy family!!!
That will certainly “keep you on your toes”.......
Next time you buy something cheap, check.......
Canada and broke after going hunting, the second for 21$ and lasted me at least one year, my advise to you is don't be cheap no matter what country you are in. Specially when saving 50$ on a hammock could cost 500$ for your skull.
:-)
... not cheap, the best available. But the 24/7 salt in the air - surfing beach-front - finds out any weakness. Electricals and electronics really suffer!
No excuse for shoddy manufacture, however.
Still, if I wanted a total-quality-environment I would be in the London commuter belt, sharing the Olympics, wouldn't I.
'Someone said' blah, blah LOL! You are priceless and very, very stupid.
#10 To be fair the black plague was a few hundred years ago now!
“Someone said” - can you put a name to them.
Someone said the moon is made of green cheese - not necessarily true !!
If London “stinks” then the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the London Olympics don't seem to be aware of this.
You may be referring to the Great Stink in the 1850's when the Thames was so polluted that it led to the installation to a huge sewage system to clean up the city.
As to living one's life in denial , you live yours divorced from reality.
Go back to swigging apple jack .
I would guess that this was well in advance of anything like this in B.A.
from the assehole called afrika.
China is the world engine now, bit like we were in the 19th century when we made everything, i believe its call capitalist imperialism. Kinda like we rape your resources, you buy owe manufactured goods. Living in a country that had an empire, its always amusing to watch a new power rising.
China´s rise is doom to fail, aging population, totalitarism, centralization of economic resources and feudalistic capitalism are all bad formulas for growth. The British Empire lasted long thanks to its institutional checks and balances, the same happens to the USA, the opposite killed the USSR and terminated the Othoman Empire as well, there are plenty of historical examples that tells us clearly that China will have to change, democratize and create solid institutions before they become the next world superpower, otherwise they will become old before they get rich.
The USA, parts of Europe, Japan, Australia and some other countries can handle aging populations because their household income remains high and in fact the majorities age with private pension funds and medical care. More than 80% in the USA for example, so the state has to fund social security for less than 20% of the population.
China´s social security profile is terrifying, that is why many economist point at population aging as China´s biggest dilema in 2020 and onwards. The hundreds of million of chinese working for one or two dollars a day today will not have access to private pension funds and medical care, the state will not be able to provide it either. So by 2025 China will have hundreds of million of old men without a social net. China could fall into economic stagnation and social crisis.
much of the world, and especially China with its HUGE population, has a demographic imbalance problem - largely as a result of policies to reduce the absolute population size of countries/ regions/ the world.
Solutions (for China) might involve:
a breeding programme to re-balance the demographies (unacceptable),
a population relocation programme to either bring in cheap foreign carers of the old - like in the rich Arab countries (unacceptable?),
a culling of the old programme (unacceptable).
A super-rich 'country' can buy its way out of its problem, but only to the detriment of its feeder countries - like the high days of the Roman Empire, sucking resources out of the feeder world.
Unfortunately, if China does NOT collapse under the strain (China WILL change, it is no longer politico-economically ossified), the vast majority of the globe will become China's 'feeder world'. As China sucks the world dry of essential commodities and progressively sequesters their flows, the 'empires' of the Romans, the Europeans, and the USA will be small beer compared to the world-impact of this latest (returned) empire.
I don´t share the China superpower vision. China expanded economically during the last few decades thanks almost exclusively to cheap labor. But the conditions that allowed this economic expansion may no longer there.
Sometimes size matters, for a while, then the wheel makes another turn, and things change. American industries are beating back with automation for manufacturing cars and all kinds of products, at home. Ford is making cars in the US and Europe with the help of robots, already there are thousands of garage shops utilizing 3d printing accross northamerica, making all kinds of products, with less people, sometimes without human labor. Nanotechnology and Robotics, Mechatronics are rapidly impacting industries in North America, Northern Europe and Japan and other parts of Asia, it is a new industrial revolution that will once again change the world.
In a few years, maybe a decade, population size will mean less what it does today and China´s huge cheap labor advantage will become irrelevant. This industrial revolution that will reduce the need for human labor ever more is coming, whether we like it or not, and it will be nothing like the Luddite movement of textile artisans that destroyed mechanized looms in 19th-century England ever imagined. It will almost erase the need for human labor.
Service oriented societies like the US, Northern Europe and other nations will reap the benefits, even smaller countries like Israel, Holland or Taiwan are already dreaming of producing as much as China in some industries, but without the need for large pools of labor.
Population has been China´s biggest advantage and source of power, but it may very well turn agaisnt it and become a demographic nightmare if they are not careful with their industrial and economic policies.
China will certainly develop automation and robotics, no doubt about it.
I think the difference is that the US is a service oriented economy, with consolidated service sectors in banking, commerce, telecom, etc. The service sectors absorbed millions of workers who lost their jobs because of China´s exports.
Automation, robotics, mechatronics, all of that will translate in massive lay-offs, but China´s smaller service sector and the absence of a social security net beyond their export-oriented economy will make it difficult to absorb the social costs.
Same question as Yul.
How will those laid-off in the USA because there is no need for hands-on manufacture build a livin' pension?
When the graduates spend forty years flipping burgers, there won't be much in the pension pot. Or will the burger-flippers be being paid as much as vehicle builders, etc.?
Not a naive question... though a bit flippant. Just can't see nations being able to survive long-term on just a service sector.
The US is an economy with a predominant service sector, the idea of average american graduates flipping burgers or working at a low-end job in Walmart is completely misguided.
Most northamericans are generating GDP in sectors such as Telecommunication, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare/hospitals, Public health, Waste disposal, Education, Banking, Insurance, Financial services
Legal services, Consulting, Information technology, News medias, Gaming, Tourism, Retail sales, Franchising, Real estate, Government, etc.
The Ipad manufactured in China or Brazil is designed in California or somewhere else in the US, same as the products you buy in a Starbucks in Mexico City or London. Same for the MacDonald burger or desserts, same for hundreds of thousands of products and services.
1/These sectors are exclusive to the USA and will not become less profitable as competition (and counterfeiting) eats into these sectors.
2/Some of these sectors are drawing in foreign nationals who do not necessaryily have allegiance to the USA.
You are going to support Romney are you,or do you disagree with his assumption that the USA cannot provide a decent living for all Americans ie including the sick,the old and the unemployed?
I think you've just described the economies of virtually every country in the Western world ... and all with lower 'costs' than the USA.
The only way the USA can succeed is by causing these 'industries' to decline and fall in these Western competing countries.
.... hang on! Isn't that what the USA is doing to the non-US banking corporations, pharmaceuticals, etc.?
I think he meant to say “tat” - which means low quality goods which do not last.
So if Brazil can create the same services at lower costs, why haven´t they generated the Steve Jobs, the Mark Zuckerbergs?
It´s not that easy.
What is it about Facebook ? It's growth.Its originality.It productive capabilities.Or it's added value?
If somebody bans it from a large population what can be done.And how many pensions will it generate?Will it contribute tax for welfare spending or jobs for the millions without jobs.
Right that's Mark Zuckerberg dealt with, now let's talk about Steve Jobs, Apple employs well over 60.000 people WORLD WIDE, and produces US$26 million per anum on which it pays taxes and it's ahare of pensions.
It seems that you are being a little biased in your way of looking at things. Brazil is not producing the entreprenuers that the USA does, because it lacks the business funding for the universities, in the same way as the rest of South America.
This is what we are posting about isn't it.How does the USA reduce unemployment,so that more of the people can provide a pension for themselves,among other things.It amazes me how people still believe in wonder men that will save the world for capitalism.What about the people with no work through no fault of their own.And don't give me they all wasters.
I'm pretty sure that Saverin, co-creator of the social network known as Facebook, is a Brasilian.
Mexico would include Carlos Slim.Brasil,Eike Batista.India,Mittel,ect.
Zuckerberg didn't invent today's Facebook it grew in the Internet boom,and in 25years we will look back without any of the wonder that the the story has today.The printing press has a similar role in the creation of book publishing and the newspaper industry.
Romance is a wonderful activity of the human race,even that has created wealth for some.But to solve the contemporary problems in the world needs will not magicians.Do you think?
at its very basal level, the contemporary problems in the world needs ...
trees by the trillion, if we are to avoid the desertification of the vast majority of the world. And trees not cut down every year for fuelling clay cookers. It would be sad if, in a couple of millenia (a short time), the surface of land on Earth looked like the Mars pictures we are currently receiving.
GM on many crop types for all appropriate 'survival zones'.
And to make this all happen?
The eradication of corrupt individuals in society....
If they cannot be persuaded to act ethically, I would be in favour of 'removing them permanently', and replacing them with individuals of true 'ethical intelligence' who work for the common good.
Yes, I know this would need the removal of - arguably - all today's politicians, leaders of industry, religious leaders, etc.
It would need a 'phasing in' - pretty much like Dilma Rousseff's approach. Too long, and the individuals of change become compromised; too short and they become dead.
Countries would argue that they need these 'essential workers' (= corrupt'Leaders') to keep them competitive against other nations.
Who would be these supra-national world managers?
When I started my lifetime the answer would have been the League of Nations.
During my life two competing paradigms of world leadership have prevailed
- the hegemony of 'lead nation' and support nations, maintained by power.
- the United Nations.
The jury is out about which paradigm will - and should - prevail.
Brute strength supplies power, but this demands 'Losers'. A 'better world' is incompatible with the concept of Losers in thrall to Hegemonic Winners.
The United Nations, in its present form is unfit for your purpose, Yul. But a sensible starting point is to stop hegemonic countries from blocking humanitarian intervention in places like Syria. It is unacceptable for nations to use the poor places and populations of the world as free-fire weapons testing zones.
It will be down to you and thinking, ethical and forceful people of your age.
I guess this threads finished 'they've ' moved on.
If they cannot be persuaded to act ethically, I would be in favour of 'removing them permanently', and replacing them with individuals of true 'ethical intelligence' who work for the common good.”
Firstly, greed is a basic human drive, corruption is merely an act of the greedy in a position of power.
Secondly, change a couple of adjectives in that and it could be something from the writings of Pol Pot. What you end up with if you start using force to imprint your ideology on the populace is not enlightenment but a bloodbath and eventual overthrow.
Jus' sayin'
I don't believe there was any offer of persuasion by the Pol Pot regime, so I don't see the comparison.
If persuasion failed to change unethical behaviour would you advocate submitting to the unethical.
But just relying on the corrupt to change their nature willingly is particularly unrewarding.
When the prize is survival of the species, such a strategy just doesn't cut it.
We are debating whether ethics - rather than corruption - can provide a future for the human species.
I ask you, is it more ethical to remove the criminal and corrupt for the sake of the rest, or is it more ethical to allow the criminal and corrupt to dominate, accepting that this brings demise of the human species?
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