China has urged the US to correct its wrongdoings, and work with China and other WTO members to jointly safeguard the multilateral trading system, as the US showed defiance over a new WTO ruling saying that the US' Section 232 tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products were in breach ...
The sewing lines at Bernhard Furniture Company which where skilled craft
jobs are growing without the help of tariffs, and company officials
https://youtu.be/OCk4VkAKKFc
Trump's tariffs won't restore U.S. furniture jobs :
https://www.reuters.tv/v/PvWi/2018/09/27/trump-s-tariffs-won-t-restore-u-s-furniture-jobs
In a town where a 30-feet tall chair is the chief landmark, and which is synonymous with a U.S. furniture industry decimated over the years by imports from China, many greet the possibility of tariffs on Chinese goods with a shrug.
No wonder. Of three once bustling Thomasville furniture plants in the city limits, one is being demolished and cleared for parkland, another may become the site of a new police station, and a third is being converted into apartments.
President Donald Trump is threatening to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on $500 billion of goods imported from China each year, including roughly $20 billion of furniture, as a way to bring back hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost to China and other low-cost competitors.
Yet, the transformation of U.S. industries since China’s emergence as the world’s low-cost producer almost two decades ago means many no longer directly compete with Chinese imports, so tariffs may not translate so easily into more U.S. jobs.
At family-owned Bernhardt Furniture in Lenoir, some 90 miles west of Thomasville, executives say it would take about $30 million in capital investment - some 10 percent of annual sales - to resurrect standard wood furniture lines now mainly made in countries like China and Vietnam.
That is too much to commit based on a policy that a future administration could reverse.
"The theory is you turn (imports) off, the jobs come back. That's not really true... The buildings don't exist. The people don't exist. The machinery does not exist," to make the sorts of furniture that now gets imported, said Alex Bernhardt Jr., chief executive and the company founder's great grandson.
What the company needs now, executives say, is the open markets and steady economy that have allowed it to grow its workforce from below 800 at the end of the 2007-2009 recession to almost 1,500 today - partly on the basis of exports to China.
DIFFERENT COMPANY
That growth has been largely driven by demand for more customized, higher end furniture. In expanding, the 129-year-old company has been hiring not only factory workers, but also designers, marketing experts and other professionals.
In all, it is a different firm from what it was three decades ago when it first began dividing product lines between the United States and Asia.
Economists say the same is true across much of U.S. manufacturing. To invest and hire more workers, executives would need certainty, for example, that consumers would prefer U.S.-made products at a potentially higher price. They would need confidence that tariffs would last beyond the Trump administration and that production could not be shifted to other more cost-competitive countries.
Even then, there may be little incentive to go back to old product lines for industries that have changed dramatically because of globalization.
Across the Rust Belt and the former factory towns of the south, the transformation is apparent. In Buffalo, an old steel mill is now a solar panel factory, and a retail goods manufacturer now houses an office and restaurant park. Near Dayton, Ohio, a shuttered GM plant has reopened as a Chinese-owned auto glass company. Abandoned factories throughout North Carolina have landed on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of "brownfield" sites that need cleanup.
Some companies are considering moving production from China as a result of the tariffs, but the jobs are unlikely to head home.
Illinois-based CCTY Bearing, for example, said it planned to move U.S.-bound production from Zhenjiang, China, to a new plant near Mumbai in India to keep labor costs down.
JLab Audio's China-made Bluetooth products are not being taxed yet, but its chief executive Win Cramer had been scouting for suppliers in Vietnam and Mexico.
"I would love to build products onshore, but consumers have proven time and time again that "Made in America" isn't as valuable a statement as it once was," Cramer said. "They make decisions based on the cost."
The price of, say, its Bluetooth earbud would jump from $20 to as much as $50 if it was made in the United States, Cramer said, far more than what tariffs would add to the cost of imports.
To be sure, early reactions suggest that foreign companies that make U.S.-bound goods in China may move some of that production to the United States. Still, countries such as Vietnam may ultimately benefit the most from Trump's tariffs.
Japanese construction and mining equipment maker Komatsu Ltd < 6301.T > has said it has already shifted some of its production of parts for U.S.-built excavators from China. Part of that production moved to the United States, but some also went to Mexico and Japan.
In South Korea, LG Electronics <066570 .ks=""> and its rival Samsung Electronics <005930 .ks=""> are considering moving parts of U.S.-bound refrigerator and air conditioner production to Mexico, Vietnam or back home, but not to the United States, according to company sources and local media.
STEADY RECOVERY
The responses to Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum show how such steps create both winners and losers.
Producers such as U.S. Steel and Century Aluminum have said they will add at least several hundred jobs as a result of the higher prices they can charge.
Mid-Continental Nail, however, laid off 130 workers because of those higher steel prices, and furniture parts maker Leggett & Platt has warned that rising metal prices would prompt it to shift production abroad.
So far, Washington has imposed duties on $250 billion of Chinese imports and Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on all Chinese goods.
Many economists project new tariffs would on balance either slow down hiring or cause job losses in a manufacturing sector where employment has grown by 10 percent over the past eight years without special protection.
(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Q1AFUW)
The furniture industry, among the hardest hit by Chinese imports, has added 43,000 jobs since its employment hit a low of 350,000 in 2011, helped by the recovering housing market and strong consumer demand.
Industry officials say skilled upholsterers and other workers are hard to find, echoing the Federal Reserve's concern about the impact of worker shortages on the U.S. economy.
In Thomasville, few expect that tariffs will bring furniture manufacturing back to its heyday, nor does the community need it, says city manager Kelly Craver, whose parents worked in the furniture and textile industries.
Since the recession, Thomasville has become a residential hub for growing nearby cities such as Greensboro and Charlotte. It also has its own mix of manufacturing and white collar jobs.
Mohawk Industries recently expanded its Thomasville laminate flooring facility while the Old Dominion Freight Line transportation firm and the fast-growing Cook Out burger chain have corporate headquarters there.
"We, for the very first time in this city's existence, are going to have a diversified economy," Craver said.
"It would not be profitable to build the Focus Active in the U.S. given an expected annual sales volume of fewer than 50,000 units," automaker Ford Motor Company said in a statement on Sunday.
US President Donald Trump tweeted earlier on Sunday that "'Ford has abruptly killed a plan to sell a Chinese-made small vehicle in the US because of the prospect of higher US Tariffs.' CNBC. This is just the beginning. This car can now be built in the USA and Ford will pay no tariffs!" Ford quickly clarified the facts, evidently rebuffing Trump's tweet.
Likewise, tech giant Apple Inc. wrote a letter to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, saying that a proposed 25 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese imports would cover a "wide range of Apple products."
In another tweet, Trump told Apple to make their products in the US instead of China. Apple hasn't responded.
According to the US media, the price of iPhone may increase to $2,000 if the company does as told.
The multinational companies that produce automobile and mobile phones have different manufacturing and sales layouts. Car manufacturers tend to produce their products where they are sold, while mobile phone manufacturers optimize their production chain costs worldwide. That's the natural law of economic globalization which can't be easily changed by a country's government.
The White House lacks understanding of the global production and value chains. "Make your products in the United States instead of China" seems naive. Instead of coercing companies to follow demands, imposing tariffs will only scare them off.
Simply making US companies produce in the US can't deal with the complicated global industry today. We have also learnt from history that neither side will gain in a trade war.
China is the world's largest automobile and mobile phone market. Setting tariff barriers between Beijing and Washington won't make US companies give up on China for the sake of their own country. As long as China doesn't make things hard for US companies, it's unavoidable that they will place production operations in China. The Chinese market can help them make money, but the White House can't.
Most American high-tech companies will face difficulties if they leave China. The larger the market is, the higher return the companies will get from their research and development. High-tech companies, if they can't grow to be giant, don't usually survive for long, and it would be fatal for many of them to lose the Chinese market.
There hasn't been a previous US government that dares to instruct multinational companies in production layouts, and the current administration has overestimated its executive power. The global industrial chain today is formed by market rules established over decades and can't be easily changed by one government.
It would be the White House's dream to expect that the US is not only the world's technology and financial center, but also the world's factory that sells its products globally. If the US doesn't want to wake up from this dream, then the outside world has to step in and rouse Washington.
China should give up the illusion of persuading Australia
to stop containing China together with the US. Instead Beijing should
let Canberra calm down and rethink.
The Chinese people must cherish what the country has
earned them. China has no alternative but to continue to learn how to
deal with the world in the 21st century.
The "five-no" and "four-can't" are truly inspiring. They
correct the concepts of rights and point to the justice of the day.
President Xi's points will definitely leave a deep mark on the history
of relations between the African continent and China, and the entire
world.
The possibility of the West leading the collaboration
with the continent again always exists as long as they do not get their
heads jammed by a geopolitical mind-set.
The US, South Korea and Japan must clarify what exactly
they want on the Korean Peninsula. They cannot have everything,
especially things that contradict each other. If the US wishes for
denuclearization and peace on the peninsula, it would see the value of
China-North Korea ties and support them.
https://youtu.be/OCk4VkAKKFc 
