Yabby,Jing is making speciality furniture for retailers both here and in the US.He was making furniture here eg a table $1100 and it was retailing in a Mosman store for $8000.00 and in one instance $15,000.00.

He is now doing office fitouts for the US which is a speciality and specific manufacturing process.This new knowledge is slowly filtering into the Chinese market and he tells me he has a 5 yr window of opportunity before the margins are squeezed by other local manufacturers.This implies that the Chinese locals can go far cheaper and even high tech machines will not save our local manufacturers.

*and it was retailing in a Mosman store for $8000.00 and in one instance $15,000.00.*

But Arjay, when people spend that kind of money on a table, they
are buying a status symbol. Do you really think that when
"Made in China" is on the label, it will still be one?

I remind you that today the largest market for Rolex watches,
Hermes handbags from France etc, is in fact in China. The wealthy
like to differentiate themselves from the rest of us, they do it
through these products.

When companies or people have fitouts and want things altered,
change their minds as they go etc, the locals will always have
a huge advantage, for they are on site to respond. It is that
kind of service that they will pay for. Kitchens are an other
example. Yes you can get knock together kitchens, but all the
cabinet makers whom I know are flat out building speciality kitchens
to fit the house being built etc. Cabinet makers can deal
direct with the client, cutting out importers, traders, shippers
etc. They will always have the local advantage.

A few weeks ago I wanted a couple of speciality doors made up.
I rang half a dozen cabinet makers. Not one had the time to
make them, the waiting list was at least a couple of months.

That stuff is a very different market, to the knock together stuff
from Ikea.

“…our trade account for September was actually around the 3 billion$ in the black

A sizeable amount of that was raw materials.

” …the locals will always have a huge advantage, for they are on site to respond.”

With globalization, this may not be true with new technology, cheap transportation costs and if your doors are wide open to foreign workers who are willing to work at a low rate.

Canon, makers of cameras, copiers, etc. has very few products made in China because not everyone pays attention to copyright laws. Soon these products will be copied and sold at a very cheap price.

Phillip Tang, pleased you agree but you then express criticism of what amount to monopolistic trade practices.
Free-trade, the process most favoured by libertarian capitalists, is the antithesis of monopoly trading, which is invariably demanded/supported by the weak minded, those who believe in government regulation of everything and conveniently forget that the most corrupt and pervasive monopolies are the government ones, where the “operator” controls not only the “production” but also “regulates” the market and thus rapes the consumer (aka Socialism/Communism).

The point with free trade agreements is they will, over time, improve the lot of the many through the value adding processes of trade.

Protectionism and monopolistic trade is not only bad for developed market consumers but through locking developing nations out of market opportunities, it diminishes their chance to improve their economic lot.

What I might suggest is, your criticism is that free-trade agreements are not working as well as their name should imply.

That might be so, so many developing nations resist removing their own tariff and quota structures too.

However, free-trade agreements, working in any form will be a great improvement on their alternative, being “protectionism” and all the loss of productivity / opportunity which that brings with it.



DreamOn “we are the people who are of the view that the needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few.”

is that the royal “we”?
when I asked “Who are you or anyone else to decide”, I was really asking in the singular, not in any collective sense, which you may feel entitled to speak on behalf of.

re “needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few”

sounds too much like “the benefit of the common good” to be anything other than a placard statement, like those brandished during rallies of the indolent, enviously decrying the achievements of the diligent and competent.

“the red necked propaganda parrot extraordinaire”,

that is a pretty accurate description, except for the “propaganda” bit but thanks for considering me “extrordinaire”,

very complimentary, so much nicer than being one of the “many” (with all those ‘needs’ : - ))

*A sizeable amount of that was raw materials. *

So what if it was raw materials? Mining and farming happens
to be what we are good at, for good reasons. Over generations
they learnt to compete on a global market, without all the
protection and subsidies paid to manufacture in Australia.

So in global terms we have efficient miners and farmers,
but a manufacturing sector that never learnt to compete,
so now much of it is in a hole.

These stats are from 2003 and the game has changed somewhat,
Germany is now the world's largest exporter, China is no 2.
But of the top ten countries in exports, 9 are from high
wage countries, 1 is a low wage country.

http://www.investment-in-germany.de/english/business/trade3.htm

Just look around you what we import from Japan, Europe, the US,
all high wage countries. There is more to manufacture then
a few cheap consumer goods.

Fact is because we mollycoddled and protected manufacture for
so long, we are still largely stuck with a backward manufacturing
sector, unlike Germany, Switzerland and all the rest.

Yabby “Over generations they learnt to compete on a global market, without all the protection and subsidies paid to manufacture in Australia.”

And that was the point when Hawke initiated the first steps away from the post WWII “protectionism”, back in the 1980’s and also why we are all better off than where resources (capital finance, factory premises, skilled staff etc) are deployed producing competitive products, rather than small quantities of expensive, local products, which are inherently uncompetitive and where the consumer is limited in their free choice because of huge price tariffs and quota systems.