Yesterday, a long-term European client of ours asked me about the state of manufacturing in China. In response I asked him if he wanted the long or the short version. When he replied, “short,” my response was “really mixed, but overall really bad.” He then asked me to give him the short version how foreign
Yet again yesterday, the number of coronavirus cases and deaths reached a record number. In other words, the virus continues to spread ever faster and until it begins to slow down there is literally no end in sight. And yet, yesterday was also the day some Chinese factories were to open again for business. In
When I was 16, I lived for a year in Istanbul, Turkey, and it was then and there that I decided I wanted to become an international lawyer (if I was not going to make it as a professional basketball player). This was back in the days when you were considered international if you had
I have a good friend with whom I formerly worked at a big law firm. He is smart as hell and a terrific lawyer. He is now the General Counsel and EVP at a big company. But when we were practicing law together, he would often talk seriously and wistfully about leaving the practice of
The issue of forced labor in China has been in the news recently. In part, this is due to the connection between this issue and the larger human rights crisis in Xinjiang. However, forced labor is hardly a problem confined to Xinjiang, as a recent scandal involving British supermarket chain Tesco shows. Last month, Tesco
A few days ago, in China Manufacturing: “Elvis Has Left the Building”, we mentioned a South China Morning Post article suggesting the manufacturing exodus from China will not abate, regardless of any patches trade negotiators manage to place on the overall, strained U.S.-China relationship. That article included some sobering stats on the giant sucking sound we
Christmas morning and I find myself responding to companies that recently got worthless product from China, in what is typical pretty much at the end of every year. I think these things increase at the end of the year because the Chinese company that sends the worthless product has decided to shut down at the
In China Factories Are Exporting Lower Prices Around the World, Bloomberg News wrote this week about something our internmational manufacturing lawyers have been seeing: Desperate Chinese factories are lowering their prices. Are all Chinese factories desperate? Absolutely not. Are all Chinese factories lowering their prices? Near as we can tell, a great many are, especially
The seemingly endless U.S.-China trade war keeps slogging along. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has already imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports on three previous lists (List 1 = $34 billion starting from July 2018, List 2 = $16 billion from August 2018, List 3 = $200 billion from
