Skip to main content

Home/ Global Economy/ Group items tagged export

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Gene Ellis

Carmakers Are Central Voice in U.S.-Europe Trade Talks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...for-us-europe-trade-talks.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • With the dexterity of thieves stripping a vehicle for parts, they remove each van’s engine, bumpers, tires, drive shaft, fuel tank and the exhaust system.
  • Next, the crews pack everything into steel freight containers, which begin a journey by river barge and cargo ship to Ladson, S.C., near the port of Charleston. There, American teams put the vans back together again.
  • It would be more efficient to ship the vans in one piece, of course. But with current trade rules, efficiency is seldom the goal.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Daimler’s stripped-down vans travel by cargo ship to Ladson, S.C., where a token portion of assembly occurs to avoid a costly American tariff.
  • It was first imposed on European light trucks during the 1960s in retaliation for German and French trade restrictions on American chickens.
  • The importance of European-American auto production, meanwhile, was highlighted by Volkswagen’s announcement on Monday that it would open a new production line in Chattanooga, Tenn., to make sport utility vehicles.
  • In Europe, discussion about the economic benefits of an agreement has been overshadowed by fears that more open trade would expose the Continent to what are widely perceived as less stringent safety and environmental standards in the United States. (And once again, chickens play a big role.)
  • Trucks, cars and other transportation equipment such as airplanes make up the second-biggest category of merchandise traded between the United States and Europe, just behind chemicals.
  • n the first three months of 2014 alone, the United States exported $2.6 billion in motor vehicles and parts to the European Union, and imported $12.3 billion worth.
  • The engines and other components used in Freightliner heavy trucks made in Portland, Ore., are similar to those installed in Mercedes-Benz heavy trucks made in Wörth, Germany. But Daimler must design and engineer many parts twice — and submit them for regulatory certification twice — to meet different United States and European rules.
  • The reason that Daimler goes to the trouble of finishing assembly in Germany in the first place is that the vehicles must be test-driven before they leave the factory. It would be too costly to set up a separate testing operation in the United States, the company said.
  • Industries like chemicals and pharmaceuticals are even trickier, and food is a particularly emotional issue in Europe.
  • there is a fixation on American chickens disinfected with chlorine, which local consumers find repellent
Gene Ellis

Weaning Europe From Russian Gas - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...g-europe-from-russian-gas.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Weaning Europe From Russian Gas
  • European Union leaders at a summit meeting last week made a commitment to cut their dependence on Russian gas.
  • Russia gets about 14 percent of its entire export earnings from the gas it sells to other European countries.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Some countries in Central Europe — such as Austria and the Czech Republic — and the Balkans would run out of gas they import through Ukraine.
  • that Russia cuts supplies of gas through Ukraine but continues pumping it through its other two pipelines to the West — one through the Baltic and the other through Poland.
  • In such a scenario,
  • The European Union also responded to the 2009 shutdown by building “interconnectors” between different countries. As a result, it is easier to shunt gas and electricity from countries that have excess energy to those that face a shortage — though these connections are still patchy and need to be built up.
  • n the short run, European Union countries can use more coal and less gas in their electricity generation.
  • The European Union can also increase imports of liquefied natural gas, mainly from Qatar. But there are problems. First, most of the Union’s L.N.G. terminals are in Western Europe, whereas it is the eastern part of the Union that is most vulnerable to a cutoff of Russian gas. So more terminals need to be built, which takes time. What’s more, L.N.G. is expensive — partly because Japan is buying lots of it after closing its nuclear plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
  • Longer term, European Union nations should embrace shale gas. It is cheap and local. Britain and Poland have the most potential.
  • Meanwhile, countries such as Germany should abandon their knee-jerk aversion to nuclear energy.
  • The problem is not the carbon goal, said Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe, a research institute. Rather it is the renewable target, which results in uneconomic wind and solar power being built across the Union.
Gene Ellis

The Economist explains: How countries calculate their GDP | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...economist-explains-26

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • How countries calculate their GDP
  • Simon Kuznets, a Russian emigrant to America, is credited with creating the first true GDP estimate, for delivery to America’s Congress in 1934
  • Output can be measured in three (theoretically equivalent) ways: by adding up all the money spent each year, by adding up all the money earned each year, or by adding up all the value added each year. Some economies, including Britain, combine all three methods into a single GDP figure, whereas others, like America, produce different statistics for each.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • merica’s Bureau of Economic Analysis draws data from surveys of manufacturers, builders and retailers, as well as from trade and financial flows, among other sources. These data are used to estimate the components of GDP, such as total investment and net exports
  • Real, or inflation-adjusted, GDP is needed to compare figures across time periods, while GDP per person is best for understanding how individual incomes are evolving.
Gene Ellis

Citi Cuts Costa Rica Growth Forecast After Firings - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-intel-fire-3-000-workers.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Citi Cuts Costa Rica Growth Forecast After Firings
  • Hours later, BofA said it would be exiting operations in Costa Rica, Guadalajara, Mexico and Taguig, Philippines, without saying how many jobs would be lost. Costa Rica’s foreign investment agency said the BofA move would result in 1,500 layoffs.
  • “This is a strong call to the country to keeps tabs on things like the rising cost of electricity, telecommunications, wages and social guarantees.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The country of 4.7 million people climbed seven spots to 102nd in the World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” report this year, lagging behind China, Vietnam and Namibia. Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook on Costa Rica to negative from neutral in September, citing a rising debt burden and widening budget deficit. Moody’s rates the country Baa3, putting it in the same category as Turkey and Iceland.
  • In a Bloomberg survey published last month, Costa Rica was ranked fourth behind Russia, Argentina and Ukraine on a list of countries confronting the biggest loss of investor confidence. The survey cited data including the rising cost of credit default swaps and the currency’s performance against the dollar.
  • California-based Intel, whose processors run more than 80 percent of personal computers shipped worldwide every year, originally chose to establish operations in Costa Rica after studying sites in Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico, according to a 2000 case study by Harvard University’s Center for International Development. The company’s $600 million investment at the time represented about 4.2 percent of GDP, prompting the company’s then-Vice President Bob Perlman to say Intel’s arrival was like “putting a whale in a swimming pool,” according to the study.
  • n 2013, about 21 percent of Costa Rica’s exports of goods came from Intel, according to investment promotion agency CINDE
Gene Ellis

Aluminum and Icelandic GDP | Askja Energy - The Independent Icelandic Energy Portal - 1 views

askjaenergy.org/...aluminum-and-icelandic-gdp

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Aluminum and Icelandic GDP
  • The aluminum sector now consumes almost 75 per cent of electricity generated in Iceland. When taking this part of the Icelandic energy industry into account, the total contribution of the aluminum industry to the Icelandic GDP is somewhat larger than the direct contribution, and the total contribution can be said to be 5.4-6.3 per cent annually (on average in the period 2007-2010). In 2010 this number was approximately 7.7-8.6 per cent.
  • n her thesis, Ms. Ragnarsdóttir explains how aluminum production first began in Iceland in the year 1969, with an output of barely 11 thousand tons annually. In the early 1990s the rate of production grew rapidly and today it is around 820 thousand tons annually. Two of the largest hydroelectric power stations in Iceland were constructed mainly to serve the aluminium industry.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 4,000 jobs
  • Today, the aluminum products have approximately a 40 percent  share in the total export of goods from Iceland (which is more or less the same proportion as that of fish products).
Gene Ellis

UAE's Mubadala, Guinea sign $5 billion bauxite, alumina deal | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...a-guinea-idUSBRE9AO0BS20131125

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The agreement includes $1 billion for extraction and exports of bauxite to the UAE as well as a $4 billion aluminium refinery and a port, Mohamed Lamine Fofana, Guinea's minister for mines and geology told Reuters at a Guinea investors' conference in Abu Dhabi.The investment forms part of the UAE's expansion plans for its Emirates Global Aluminium business, set to become the world's fifth largest aluminium company by output next year.Emirates Global Aluminium was created from the merger of DUBAL and Emirates Aluminium (EMAL). The merged group has two aluminium plants in the UAE, one in Dubai and a second at Taweelah near Abu Dhabi.
  • In May 2013, Mubadala and DUBAL said they would jointly take over a Guinea Alumina Corp project in Guinea, acquiring 66.6 percent from BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) and Global Alumina.
Gene Ellis

China's Economic Empire - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...chinas-economic-empire.html

Chinese lending

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • China has also invested heavily in building infrastructure, undertaking huge hydroelectric projects like the Merowe Dam on the Nile in Sudan — the biggest Chinese engineering project in Africa — and Ecuador’s $2.3 billion Coca Codo Sinclair Dam. And China is currently involved in the building of more than 200 other dams across the planet, according to International Rivers, a nonprofit environmental organization.
  • China has become the world’s leading exporter; it also surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest trading nation in 2012.
  • annual investment from China to the European Union grew from less than $1 billion annually before 2008 to more than $10 billion in the past two years. And in the United States, investment surged from less than $1 billion in 2008 to a record high of $6.7 billion in 2012, according to the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm. Last year, Europe was the destination for 33 percent of China’s foreign direct investment.
Gene Ellis

To Lower Tariffs, Vietnam Pushes for Easing Trade Rules - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...es-for-easing-trade-rules.html

trade rules Vietnam Europe

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Europe generally requires what is known as a “double transformation” in goods for them to be considered made in a certain region. In the case of clothing, one step, or “transformation,” would be weaving yarn into a fabric. A second transformation would be assembling the fabric into a garment. The United States requires a “triple transformation” that extends back to the production of yarn from synthetic or natural fibers, like cotton.
  • Lien Phat Ltd.'s factory,
  • Its supplies are imported. “I mainly take orders from international corporations, who give us materials and designs,” said Truong Thi Thuy Lien, the owner of Lien Phat. “Usually the clients will designate us to certain suppliers, most of them are in China.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “I don’t deal with the exporting process. I take the order and deliver the goods to the port” in Ho Chi Minh City, she said. “The rest lies with my clients.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>
Gene Ellis

Are National Champions Really Winners? by Michael Hüther - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...ions-by-michael-h-ther-2015-02

shared by Gene Ellis on 23 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Are National Champions Really Winners?
  • Although the proportion of imported intermediate goods in German manufacturing exports has risen from around 19% to 30% since 1995, the globalization of value chains during this period has improved competitiveness, and dramatically increased manufacturing value.
« First ‹ Previous 61 - 69 of 69
Showing 20▼ items per page