The new global demand for Made in USA

March 18, 2013 by Leave a comment

salt lake tribune

By Francisco J. Sanchez

There’s no doubt about it: Doing business in America is changing. And businesses with even the most loyal customers are finding that their customers are changing, too. In an increasingly global marketplace, business owners across the United States are realizing that their next major customer may no longer come from across town, but beyond our borders.

While news of American exports may not capture the headlines as government shutdowns and political impasses do, the proof is in the thousands of regional businesses that are witnessing its value firsthand.

Not only did U.S. exports outpace the growth of imports in 2012 for the first time since 2007, exports have helped support creation of more than 6 million private sector jobs during the past 35 months. So how does this relate to the business climate here in Salt Lake City? Simple: Our nation’s success with exports has in part been driven by business owners in the Beehive State.

Take, for example, Albion Minerals of Clearfield. One year ago, the company participated in a trade mission to Vietnam that was organized by a collaboration of public and private sector groups, including the state government, the U.S. Commercial Service of Utah, and our strategic partner Zions Bank. The company has since opened a distribution center in Vietnam in a $100,000 deal and expects to see profits grow.

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Intel’s First Factory Customer Touts Made-in-USA Chips

February 20, 2013 by Leave a comment

Wall Street Journal

By Don Clark

A chip company called Achronix on Wednesday is announcing that the first fruits of Intel’s new build-to-order service are emerging from the factory. That’s a milestone for both companies, and a surprising sidelight could play into the story–worries about dependence on non-U.S. manufacturers.

The Silicon Valley startup in 2010 turned to Intel, which opted to break from long-standing practice and use its sophisticated factories and manufacturing processes to serve customers beyond Intel’s own chip-design groups. Achronix became one of two publicly announced users of the new Intel foundry business, as such services are called.

Intel believes it can make smaller and more sophisticated transistors than other foundries. Achronix, which makes a variety of programmable chips that use lots of transistors, says its bet on Intel has paid off as advertised.

The chips, which include models with a whopping six billion transistors, consume half the power of competing chips and cost about half as much, Achronix says. It is shipping sample quantities to customers now and, when extended testing is completed, will be shipping them in volume in the third quarter, says Robert Blake, the company’s president and chief executive officer.

Most foundry factories are in Taiwan or other parts of Asia. Achronix is quick to point out that the entire process of making its chips is handled in the United States.

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Barron’s Made in America: The Next Boom

January 28, 2013 by 1 Comment

Barrons's Logo

By: KOPIN TAN Barron’s JANUARY 2013

Barron's Made in America

Photo: Barron’s John Kuczala

Cheap natural gas and increasingly competitive labor costs are bringing factories and jobs back to the U.S. Eight ways to win.

 As the only industrialized superpower not decimated by World War II, the United States once made nearly 40% of the planet’s goods. These days, that number has shrunk to 18%. We make American Girl dolls in China, Levi’s jeans in Mexico, and enough movies in Vancouver to nickname it Hollywood North.

After decades of outsourcing, however, the U.S. is quietly enjoying a manufacturing revival, and companies like Apple (ticker: AAPL), Caterpillar (CAT), Ford Motor (F),General Electric (GE), and Whirlpool (WHR) are making more of their goods on American soil again. It isn’t just U.S. companies that are drawn to our cheap energy, weak dollar, and stagnant wages. Samsung Electronics (005930.Korea) plans a $4 billion semiconductor plant in Texas, Airbus SAS is building a factory in Alabama, and Toyota (TM) wants to export minivans made in Indiana to Asia.The Rust Belt owes its new shine to many factors, including rising wages and industrial-land costs in Asia. But none is bigger than the U.S. energy boom. Thanks to a head start in extracting oil and gas from shales, North America now produces far more natural gas than any other continent. Unlike oil, gas isn’t easily transported across oceans, and a result is some of the world’s cheapest energy within our reach: Natural gas here costs $3.55 per million British thermal units, versus roughly $12 in Europe and $16 in Japan. Cheap energy not only reduces our trade deficit and our addiction to Middle East oil, it also makes our factories more competitive globally — a boon for a country that had gone from exporting American goods to exporting American jobs.The biggest beneficiaries are energy-guzzling companies like chemical producers and steelmakers, and Barron’s has identified eight stocks that should prosper in our gas-fueled manufacturing upswing. They are Southwestern Energy, LyondellBasell Industries, Nucor, Dover, Calpine, CF Industries, Williams, and Union Pacific. But any glow will also rub off on regional lenders, home builders, and local small businesses. “The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” declares Nancy Lazar, co-head of the New York research firm International Strategy & Investment. “And Middle America is my favorite emerging market.”

Our energy boom got cracking with fracking, a controversial process in which pressurized fluids are pumped through rock formations, often a mile or more under the ground, to extract oil and gas. Critics condemn fracking, which they contend causes environmental harm, but even they agree that it’s led to an abundance of cheap gas. Over the past six years, U.S. production of petroleum and natural gas has jumped from 15 million barrels of oil-equivalent a day to 20.1 million, a 20-year high. Over the same period, imports have fallen from 14 million barrels a day to below eight million, a 25-year low.

It’s a sign of the times: Graduates from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology — acceptance rate: 88%; mascot: Grubby the Miner — now command a median starting salary 16% higher than that of Yalies.

By 2020, the U.S. will become the world’s biggest oil producer, says the International Energy Agency. By 2025, North America will be a net energy exporter, predicts ExxonMobil (XOM).

That edge should remain ours for decades. “It isn’t just the huge reserves we have underground,” says Tim Parker, who manages T. Rowe Price’s natural-resource stock portfolios. “No one else has our predictable cocktail of infrastructure already in place, know-how, a relative abundance of water, and a favorable royalty regime that give landowners a stake in the exploration game.” Europe, for instance, is averse to fracking and has little infrastructure; Japan has hardly any shales; and while China has vast reserves, only shales nudging the Yangtze River have enough water for fracking.

Of course, an especially frigid winter could send gas prices soaring, but any such spike should be temporary. Given our expanding reserves and record inventory, commodity strategists expect U.S. natural gas to stay between $3 and $5 per million BTUs for years — well below prices abroad.

CHEAP GAS ISN’T THE ONLY booster in our tank. In the decade since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, that nation has become Earth’s low-cost factory. But wages and benefits there are rising 15% to 20% a year, while they’re stagnant here. Despite Beijing’s efforts to hold it down, the yuan has gained 33% against the dollar since 2005. Industrial land averages $10.22 a square foot across China, but rises to $11.15 in the coastal city of Ningbo and $21 in Shenzhen — compared with $1.30 to $4.65 in Tennessee and North Carolina. “Within five years, the total cost of producing many products will be only about 10% to 15% less in Chinese coastal cities than in parts of the U.S. where factories are likely to be built,” says Hal Sirkin, a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. Add duties and shipping, and the cost gap shrinks further.

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China’s “wild east” drug store

September 11, 2012 by Leave a comment

reuters

Philippe Andre, a detective in the murky world of Chinese pharmaceuticals, has some alarming tales to tell.

In May last year, he visited a factory an hour outside Shanghai that supposedly produced a pharmaceutical ingredient. While shown around by men wearing protective clothing and spotless hard hats, Andre noticed oddities: the floor was immaculately clean and some workers sat around idle.

The factory had an inspection log that spanned eight years with perfect record-keeping, but the handwriting was the same for all those years and not a single page was dog-eared. What’s more, while the factory had equipment to dry its product, there were no connecting pipes to funnel steam or waste gases out of the plant.

“Obviously the product was not made there,” said Andre, a Belgian who runs a pharmaceutical auditing firm in the eastern Chinese city of Tianjin that advises foreign drug companies buying ingredients in China. The building, he says, was just one of the “showroom” factories intended to disguise China’s thriving industry in substandard and counterfeit drugs.

Four years ago, Beijing promised to clean up its act following the deaths of at least 149 Americans who received contaminated Chinese supplies of the blood-thinner heparin. But an examination by Reuters has found that unregulated Chinese chemical companies making active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) are still selling their products on the open market with few or no checks.

Interviews with more than a dozen API producers and brokers indicate drug ingredients are entering the global supply chain after being made with no oversight from China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), and with no Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification, an internationally recognized standard of quality assurance.

“There is falsification of APIs going on, we know it,” said Lembit Rago, coordinator for Quality Assurance and Safety in Medicines with the World Health Organisation (WHO). “The regulated markets like Europe and the United States are relatively safe because they have well-resourced regulatory authorities. But the situation is different in places like Africa, where there are a lot of local medicine manufacturers who all use APIs from China.”

The export of unregulated drug ingredients may be putting lives at risk, particularly in poor countries where local pharmaceutical controls are minimal. Medicines containing faulty active ingredients or the wrong dose do not work properly and can contribute to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of dangerous diseases, such as malaria.

DOMINANT PRODUCER

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Filed under Business, Certifications, Chemicals, China, COOL Country of origin labeling, Currency Manipulation, Espionage, Export, Family, Food, Government, Healthcare, Illegal Workers, Power of Consumers, Recall, Supply Chain, Tainted Products Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Made in the USA Foundation, Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund and Mile High Organics Sues WTO to Keep Country of Origin Labeling Act in Force

September 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

DENVER, Colo., Sept. 5, 2012 – /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Made in the USA Foundation led a coalition of groups filing suit against the World Trade Organization, the U.S. Trade Representative and the Secretary of Agriculture to keep the U.S. Country of Origin Labeling Act (COOL) in force.  The WTO ruled this summer that COOL, which required meat from Mexico, Canada and other nations to be labeled as such, discriminated against imported beef.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court in Denver, Colorado.  The case seeks a court order declaring that the World Trade Organization does not have the authority to override U.S. law.  The Country of Origin Labeling Act requires all meat, fish, chicken and produce to be labeled at the grocery store with an accurate country of origin.

Canada and Mexico challenged the U.S. law at the World Trade Organization, arguing that the law unfairly discriminates against imports from these two nations.  The WTO does not have permanent judges.  The WTO appointed an appellate panel of three judges that included a Mexican lawyer who has represented Mexico in trade cases.

Joel D. Joseph, general counsel of the Made in the USA Foundation, said, “the WTO does not have the right to interfere with domestic laws of the United States.  When the U.S. joined the WTO, it agreed to do so only if the WTO could not overrule U.S. law.  More than 90% of U.S. consumers favor the Country of Origin Labeling Act.  This law does not discriminate against any country, it merely requires labeling.  Consumers have a right to decide whether to buy U.S. or imported meat, and accurate labeling is a consumer right.”  Joseph added, “the WTO’s appellate panel was unfairly biased against the United States and should not have allowed a Mexican lawyer, with an obvious conflict of interest, to sit on the panel.”

This is the third major decision of a WTO court that attempts to overturn U.S. law.  The prior two cases involved “dolphin safe” labels on tuna and a U.S. ban on flavored cigarettes.  Congress allows tuna to be labeled “dolphin safe” if it meets specific requirements.  Mexico complained that this discriminates against Mexican tuna because Mexican tuna is not fished in a manner that protects dolphins.

Indonesia filed a complaint with the WTO charging that the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, that prohibits flavored cigarettes from being sold in the United States discriminates against Indonesia cigarettes.  Indonesia produces clove-flavored cigarettes and wants to sell them in the U.S.  The WTO ruled that the U.S. ban on flavored cigarettes discriminated against Indonesia.

The Made in the USA Foundation is a non-profit organization formed in 1989 to promote American-made products.  The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF) represents 5,400 ranchers and cattlemen in 45 states.  Made in the USA Foundation and R-CALF were the primary supporters of the Country of Origin Labeling Act.  Mile High Organics is a food distributor in Denver, Colorado that delivers food to homes throughout the state.  Mile High Organics seeks to distribute local, Made in the USA food and supports country of origin labeling.

SOURCE Made in the USA Foundation

Filed under Brazil, Business, Canada, Certifications, COOL Country of origin labeling, Economy, Export, Farming, Food, Industry, Jobs, Mexico Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

A123 Systems gets $465 million rescue from Chinese auto parts maker

August 16, 2012 by Leave a comment

Struggling battery maker A123 Systems (AONE.O), which got a quarter-billion dollar green technology grant from the Obama administration, has won a $465 million rescue by Chinese auto parts maker Wanxiang Group Corp.

A123 Systems said the planned investment includes an initial credit extension of $25 million that it expects to receive this week. The rest coming through a mix of convertible notes and bridge finance with warrants, as certain conditions are met.

The line of credit would help A123 keep making batteries for electric and hybrid cars. Last month, the company said it was left with only 5 months of cash.

If all the warrants and notes are later converted to shares, Wanxiang will own 80 percent of the firm, A123 said in a statement.

The agreement follows the non-binding memorandum of understanding that A123 signed last week.

A123 shares were trading up 2 percent at $0.48 on Thursday morning on the Nasdaq.

A foreign rescue of A123 has the potential to ignite a political firestorm in this election year, as President Barack Obama could face criticism for bankrolling technology that ends up in Chinese hands.

The advanced car battery industry has been hurt in part by too much capacity and weak U.S. demand for electric cars.

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U.S. Mill Re-Opens To Meet China’s Rising Demand For Diapers

August 14, 2012 by Leave a comment

by JACOB GOLDSTEIN

Southern U.S. Loblolly Pine Picture:Beth J. Harpaz/AP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Virginia paper mill that shut down a few years back is reopening to meet rising demand from China and India.

The mill is “gearing up to begin producing fluff pulp—the soft, white absorbent used in diapers, tampons, and some medical bandages,” this morning’s WSJ reports.

Fluff pulp is apparently made from the fibers of a type of pine tree that grows well in the Southern U.S., so it makes sense to make it in U.S. factories and ship it to Asia.

U.S. workers selling stuff to the rising middle class in China and India is, of course, good news. And it’s the sort of thing we’re likely to hear more of, for several reasons.

* China’s leaders want to shift the economy away from an over-reliance on construction projects and toward more middle-class consumption.

* Millions of Chinese people are moving into the middle class.

* Made-in-America is a mark of quality in China.

* China’s currency has been getting stronger relative to the dollar, which makes U.S. products are cheaper for Chinese consumers.

One exporter we visited in Shanghai last year said she saw a big future in selling U.S. imports in China.

“We would love to buy products from the U.S.,” she said. “We have seen what is happening in China, so we believe the market needs to turn.”

Source:http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/13/158698126/a-u-s-mill-re-opens-to-meet-chinas-rising-demand-for-diapers

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Pratt & Whitney Caught Illegally Selling Military Technology to China

July 11, 2012 by 1 Comment

Pratt & Whitney, a key military hardware supplier to the U.S., sold China the software and engines needed to make its first-ever modern attack helicopter.

A Chinese Z10 helicopter shows off its 30 mm cannons, anti-tank guided missiles, and air-to-air missiles. (Global Security)

The Canadian arm of the aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney closed a six-year U.S. government probe last week by admitting that it helped China produce its first modern attack helicopter, a serious violation of U.S. export laws that drew a multimillion dollar fine.

At the same time it was helping China, the company was separately earning huge fees from contracts with the Pentagon, including some in which it was building weapons meant to ensure that America can maintain decisive military superiority over China’s rising military might.

The Chinese helicopter that benefited from Pratt’s engines and related computer software, now in production, comes outfitted with 30 mm cannons, anti-tank guided missiles, air-to-air missiles and unguided rockets. “This case is a clear example of how the illegal export of sensitive technology reduces the advantages our military currently possesses,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said in a statement released on June 28.

The events are once again raising questions about the circumstances under which major defense contractors might be barred from government work. Independent watchdogs have long complained that few such firms have been barred or suspended, even for egregious lawbreaking, such as supplying armaments or related equipment to a hypothetical adversary.

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Procter & Gamble P&G to Relocate Beauty HQ to Singapore Asia

May 11, 2012 by 4 Comments

Procter & Gamble Co will move its skin care, cosmetics and personal-care headquarters from Ohio to Singapore and the president of the group will leave rather than move.

The relocation, which is expected to take two years, comes as P&G wants to run the business out of Asia where it sees the biggest growth opportunity. It was announced less than three months after P&G unveiled a restructuring plan aimed at saving $10 billion and helping the world’s largest household products maker expand faster in emerging markets.

Cincinnati-based P&G’s brands include CoverGirl makeup, Olay and SK-II skin-care products and Secret deodorant.

Virginia Drosos, 49, chose to retire rather than uproot her family, which includes two teenagers, according to a P&G spokesman. Drosos has been with P&G since 1987.

Deb Henretta, group president of P&G’s Asia and global specialty channel, will take over as group president of global skin care, cosmetics and personal care.

Henretta, 51, joined P&G in 1985.

Henretta’s current position will be filled by Hatsunori Kiriyama, P&G’s vice president of Japan, marking the first time P&G has had an Asian leader as president of Asia. He will be responsible for all of Asia except Greater China, which will continue to be run by Shannan Stevenson.

Kiriyama will take over as president of Asia July 1, Henretta will take on her new role on Aug. 1, and Drosos will retire on Sept. 1, P&G said.

 

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U.S. Trade Ambassador: L.A. Apparel and Textile Companies Key to Boosting Exports

April 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

The Obama administration wants the Los Angeles apparel and textile industry to help the country double its exports by the end of 2014. Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis made his first trip to Los Angeles as a member of the Obama administration, visiting key apparel and textile factories on April 2 and then holding a round table with about 30 apparel and textile executives to urge them to take advantage of the various free-trade agreements negotiated by the U.S. government.

“The whole point of my being here is to talk to the industry about how to take advantage of the ‘Made in USA’ label and how do we use our trade agreements to help the industry export,” said Marantis, who was named Deputy U.S. Trade Representative in 2009. He has been active in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional trade agreement between the United States and eight other countries—Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore.

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