International Business Opportunities

After
EU,
Canada, and Japan also Mexico has asked to join a U.S. challenge of Chinese piracy and counterfeiting practices as a third party in World Trade Organization consultations.

The procedural step, indicates growing international pressure on Beijing to crack down on product piracy.

The U.S. filed a pair of new cases against China at the WTO last month. One of them, challenges Beijing’s rules for copyright and trademark protection.

Presidents Felipe Calderon of Mexico and George W. Bush of the United States held a series of meetings yesterday, promising to extend the free trade agreement between the two nations.

Calderon told reporters after the talks that the two had agreed to set up working groups seeking a broader agreement, which will include sensitive products like corn and beans. Bush said that neither nation is seeking to weaken free trade, instead they are seeking to increase it and boost border security.
( full story)

In times where most of companies go offshore to cut costs, whether moving manufacturing plants or outsourcing to low salary countries, new fashion trends lead to new strategies in the apparel industry.

The concept that is going to have major implications for the supply chain of American retailers and on the manufacturing of apparel, as reported in the Newsweek article: A New Fashion Frontier - March 20 issue, is Fast Fashion.

Fast Fashion, for retailers means avoiding overstock and clearance sales, by introducing new items much faster than the norm, for shoppers means checking out the latest items weekly or even daily, rather than monthly. This typically European trend is now spreading out among the American consumers.

Top European retailers, such as H&M and Zara are moving rapidly into the U.S. market, as big American players, too big to copy the fast-fashion model from the ground up, are borrowing elements of it, moving from a seasonal cycle to something much faster.

Even though fast fashion remains a niche—it represented a little more than 1 percent of American market of apparel, H&M says the United States will be its fastest-growing market.

That could leads to shifting production for the U.S. retail market from China to less distant sites, like Mexico, in order to (more…)

China’s entry into the WTO, the end of the Multifiber Act, along many other factors intervened lately on the global scene, have increased the importation in USA of cheap commodities from the Far East through the West Coast, making Los Angeles and Long Beach the largest ports in the country.

These two ports alone accounted for 68 percent of the West Coast total container units processed and are the largest employers in California.

Import transportation and distribution seemed to represent industries able to create new career opportunities, after the massive loss of jobs recorded in manufacturing due to deindustrialization and move of factories overseas.

However, it appears now that such industries could be offshored to Mexico. By taking advantage of the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), US companies are developing container terminals in Mexico and using that country as a land bridge and labor pool to deliver shipping containers to destinations in the United States at discount prices.

That raises fears about new job cuts in US. (Full story)