'You prepare for war': How one US firm tried escaping Trump's China tariffs

Current Affairs

When Larry Sloven heard last year that US tariffs threatened his China electronics business, he knew that setting up shop elsewhere would be a slog rather than an adventure.The 70-year-old had spent half his life building supply chains in southern China to produce goods for big-box US retailers. But he had never reshuffled one on short notice, with tariffs hanging over his head.
"It is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in all my 30 years in the business," said Sloven, president of Capstone International HK Ltd, a division of Florida-based Capstone Companies."You've got packaging, assembling, auditing, labour, overheads, components, logistics, transportation," he said. "I went from first gear to fourth gear very quickly."
Sloven, a native of Long Island, New York, cut his teeth in Asia in the 1970s sourcing lighting products from Japan. He then moved to Taiwan and then mainland China, making and sourcing electrical products for AT&T and Duracell, before becoming a buying agent for sporting goods retailer Dick's.
He joined Capstone in 2012 to manage its network of Chinese manufacturers from Hong Kong.Rising labour costs and tighter regulations in China had already led him to consider moving the business elsewhere in Asia. But the trade war forced his hand.
Through dozens of interviews and phone, Whatsapp and email exchanges over a year, Reuters documented Sloven's quest to uproot his supply chain operation, an effort entailing many close calls, bureaucratic headaches - and some good luck.

 Sloven is just one of thousands of entrepreneurs who have been forced by the trade war to upend their business operations in China in the biggest supply chain shift in a generation...Read More

Trade is a challenge in relationship between India, US: Ambassador Shringla

International News

Trade is one of the challenges in the relationship between India and the US, a top Indian envoy said, exuding confidence that the two nations will soon be able to reach conclusions that are mutually beneficial and satisfactory.
"One of the issues (challenges) is trade. As the US seeks to recalibrate its trading relationships with not just India but with countries across the globe, we are happy to engage in that effort, Indian Ambassador to the US Harsh Vardhan Shringla said at The Heritage Foundation think-tank on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump during their meetings in Osaka, Japan, in June on the margins of the G-20 Summit directed their officials to address issues related to trade, Shringla noted.
Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are expected to meet soon in this regard, the ambassador said without indicating the dates.
That meeting would enable us to reach conclusions that are mutually beneficial and satisfactory, he said.
Observing that the two countries will have other issues like this as they go along, Shringla said, I have no doubt that we have both the mechanisms and the required political will to address these issues.
What is important that India-US is a strategic partnership and the momentum of that partnership has to be sustained, he asserted.
"It has to be seen in a long-term perspective and one that has the inerrant basis on which we can take this relationship forward," Shringla said.

 He asserted that this relationship should not be seen in a short-term perspective....Read More

India only Asian economy that's growing its export share amid trade war

International News

The only major Asian economy that’s grown its export share since the start of the tariff wars in 2018 is the one with the fewest trade links to China.
India’s share of world exports rose to 1.71 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 from 1.58 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The share of every other economy among Asia’s 10 biggest exporting nations fell in the same period.
Part of the reason for India’s outperformance is that it’s not as integrated into global manufacturing supply chains as peers, which means exporters are cushioned from rising trade tensions in the region. It’s a sentiment that was flagged by central bank Governor Shaktikanta Das in a recent interview.
“India is not part of the global value chain,” he said. “So, US-China trade tension does not impact India as much as several other economies.”
China is the biggest buyer of goods from South Korea and Japan, whose share of world exports have fallen the most in Asia. For India, China is the third-largest market, after the US and the UAE.
“Our biggest advantage is that our product basket and market basket are both quite diversified,” said Rakesh Mohan Joshi, a professor at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi.

 Trade tensions between the US and China have given India an opportunity to ramp up exports to both countries, according to Ajay Sahai, director general and chief executive officer of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations. India’s exports to the US grew at the fastest pace in six years in the year ended March 2018, while exports to China surged 31 per cent, the second highest annual pace of growth in more than a decade, data from India’s Ministry of Commerce show....Read More