Economist, Oct 25, 2018 (II)

choi

(1) Asian economies | War Profiteering. China's regional [economic] rivals are seeking to benefit from the country's trade conflict with America. It will not be so simple.  
Will China's rivals benefit from the trade war?
Integrated supply chains mean China cannot easily be replaced.
https://www.economist.com/financ ... -from-the-trade-war

Quote:

"Of the $2.5bn-worth of [plastic grocery or shopping] bags that America imports annually, roughly two-fifths come from China. In September these were among the 5,745 Chinese-made products that started facing American tariffs of 10%—high enough to tempt [American] retailers to look for suppliers elsewhere. [Vietnam wants more, much more.]

"Both those further up the value chain than china and those below it spy opportunities. [for the former:] Wealthier countries are eyeing some of the high-end manufacturing that they lost to China. Taiwan is trying to lure back computer companies, while Malaysia and Thailand want to expand their footholds in electronics.

" 'Factory Asia' -- the web of supply chains that is spread across the region, often centred around China [and obviously including China] -- accounts for nearly half of global manufacturing.

"The shift in factories away from China in fact predates the trade war. For the better part of a decade, soaring wages [in China] * * * university graduates in China now earn nearly as much as their Taiwanese counterparts.

"It [China] is the world's biggest exporter for good reasons. The country's dense clusters of companies offer everything manufacturers need: electronics in the south, automobiles in the east and heavy industry in the north. They are supported by top-notch roads and ports. As wages have risen, companies have poured money into automation. Moreover, China itself is a big market * * * All these advantages make China's factories more productive. Dan Krassenstein, director of Asian operations for Procon Pacific [based in Lombard, Illinois -- a village 16 air miles west of downtown Chicago], a manufacturer of heavy-duty bags for transporting fertiliser, sand and the like, says[:] * * * Workers in India earn 75% less than those in China. But because they are also less efficient, Mr Krassenstein estimates that his savings per bag in India are only around 35%. His company is shifting some production to India -- but only gradually.

"There is little precedent to help estimate the impact of trade war [because before Trump, a displeasure -- not even a threat -- was enough. Take US- Japan as an example. China is the only exporter nation that has the gall to fight]. Zhang Zhiwei 张智威 [北京对外经济贸易大学学士学位 and PhD from UC San Diego] of Deutsche Bank has used America's anti-dumping duties on China-made washing machines, imposed in 2017, as a case study. China's exports of washing machines to America collapsed, but those to other countries stayed strong. Meanwhile South Korean firms shifted production to Vietnam and Thailand, which let them [S Korean firms] expand their sales in America -- a decent outcome for Factory Asia. But then in January 2018 Mr Trump whacked tariffs on all imported washing machines.  That finally led Asian makers to open factories in America. Machines there [in US] are now 15% more expensive.

Note: Surprise! About the last quotation on anti-dumping duties on large residential washing machines -- against dumping into US by South Korean firms (Samsung and LG), NOT Chinese firm; but Chinese firms have suffered 池鱼之殃.
(a) For an overview and the duties of 2018, see Section 201 Cases: Imported Large Residential Washing Machines and Imported Solar Cells and Modules. US Trade Representative,Jan 22, 2018 (under the heading "Fact Sheet;" publication date per Google)
https://ustr.gov/sites/default/f ... %20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
("On January 22, 2018, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announced that President Trump has approved recommendations * * * In 2011, Whirlpool filed a petition with the US Department of Commerce against Samsung's and LG's imports from factories in S Korea and Mexico; In 2013 Commerce issued antidumping (AD) duties (not specifying against what countries]. "Korean producers LG and Samsung, which make the vast majority of the washers imported into the United States, subsequently shifted production to China. In 2015, Whirlpool sought relief under trade remedy laws after washer imports from China sharply increased. In early 2017, Commerce issued an antidumping order on washers from China. This led to another shift in production, this time to Thailand and Vietnam. On June 5, 2017, at Whirlpool's request, the ITC [International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency; differing from Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) or US Dept of Commerce] initiated an investigation under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 * * * In 2017, both Samsung and LG announced plans to build large factories in Newberry, South Carolina and Clarksville, Tennessee."
(b) "In early 2017, Commerce issued an antidumping order on washers from China."

Here is the details:
Commerce Finds Dumping of Imports of Large Residential Washers from the People's Republic of China. International Trade Administration [a division of Commerce], US Dept of Commerce, Dec 9, 2016
https://enforcement.trade.gov/do ... ad-final-120916.pdf
("On December 9, 2016, the Department of Commerce (Commerce) * * * found that the two mandatory respondents Nanjing LG-Panda Appliances Co., Ltd. (LG),
and Suzhou Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Suzhou Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd [were dumping] * * * The petitioner for this investigation is Whirlpool Corporation (MI) [based in Benton Charter Township, Michigan: 15-mile air distance west of Kalamazoo]. * * * Excluded from the scope are stacked washer-dryers and commercial washers")

That was Obama administration.
(c)
(i) Haier completed acquisition of GE Appliances on Aug 26, 2016. Haier's website does not publish data on market shares in US of any of its products. Besides there is no free information on its market share in US; to obtain one from market researchers in US one has to pay.
(ii) Kim Eun-jin, Despite US Tariff Bomb Samsung, LG Retain Top Spots in US Washing Machine Market. BusinessKorea, Oct 30, 2018.
www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=26126

choi

() Obituary | The Man Who Spoke Out; Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist and commentator, was killed on October 2nd, aged 59.
https://www.economist.com/obitua ... ary-jamal-khashoggi

Quote:

"When the government was tying itself in knots over women’s right to drive, he ran a series of columns in Al-Watan imagining what might happen if a girl rode a camel to university. A woman riding a camel was not against the law. So what should be done about her? The next week, the girl [in Khashoggi's column] was on a bicycle; the next, on a donkey. The same legal loophole raised the same awkward questions.

"His grandfather had been the doctor of Abdel Aziz bin Saud 1875 – 1953; king of Saudi Arabia 1932-1953], the country's founder [Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932], and he himself, reporting from Afghanistan in the 1980s, had worked for Saudi intelligence, getting close to Osama bin Laden to ensure some link, some influence, for the Saudi royal house. This tricky work put him for some years in the princes’ good books.

"He could put on several personas, squeezing his bulky form into a natty suit in London and a polo shirt in Washington as well as the flowing white thawb he favoured in the Gulf. His comments on the condition of Saudi Arabia avoided bile or gossip

Khashoggi "had little taste for the 18th-century Salafi Wahhabism that haunted his country. In his youth he had joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a counterweight to puritanism, and found it a strange contradiction that Saudi Arabia, 'the mother of all political Islam,' should want to attack it. For him the Brotherhood was about democracy, even a liberation movement."

"by 2017, he banged up sharply against the new regime of the young crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman. He was told he should be grateful for the prince's reforms and keep quiet, but he could not make that Faustian bargain, or abide the growing cult of personality and centralised power. Since even his mild criticism was not tolerated, he packed up a couple of cases and left for America. * * * Not a morning dawned, however, when he did not miss his country. Washington seemed stiflingly clean. In Istanbul, he found solace in the back garden of an Arabic bookshop and in [this 'in' is in parallel to the first 'in'] his love for a Turkish researcher, Hatice Cengiz."

Note:
(a)
(i) Jamal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal
("an Arabic masculine given name, meaning 'beauty' ")

Compare Kamal, male or female given name in Arabic meaning perfection (Turkish spelling Kemal, as in Mustafa Kemal Atatürk).  en.wikipedia.org for Kamal.
(ii) Khashoggi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khashoggi
(b) Al Watan (Saudi Arabia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Watan_(Saudi_Arabia)

(c) About quotation 2. The en.wikpedia.org spells the founder's given name as Abdulaziz.
(i) Abdul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul
(also transliterated as Abdel)
means "servant of the."
(ii) Aziz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aziz
("Al-Aziz [asis: 'power and glory'; al is the definitive article] is one of the names of God in Islam")
(iii) Arabic definite article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_definite_article
(also Romanized as el- as pronounced in varieties of Arabic; does not inflect for gender, plurality or grammatical case)
(iv) In someone's Bad Books. The Phrase Finder, undated
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/199800.html
("The use of books to indicate favour or disfavour is enshrined in several phrases - 'good books,' 'bad books,' 'black books.'  The first of these was 'black books,' which appears to have originated by allusion to an actual book. In 1592, Robert Greene [an English dramatist] published his intention to create a Blacke Booke, which was to list the misdemeanors of various classes of criminal")

synonym: stay on the good side of someone (antonym: get on the bad side of); get/keep on the right/wrong ˈside of somebody (to win favor from, to please).

(d) Regarding quotation 3.
(i) thawb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb
(ii) bile
(A) (n): "ACRIMONY, VITRIOL"  Merriam-webster.com.
(B) Why?  See bile (n): "also, informally, 'anger' * * * from Latin [noun feminine] bilis 'fluid secreted by the liver,' also one of the four humors ([bile] also known as [English noun, not Latin] choler), thus 'bitterness of feeling, peevishness,' supposedly caused by excess of bile (especially as [the term/expression, not a book] black bile, 1797) * * * "
https://www.etymonline.com/word/bile

(e) Quotation 4.
(i)
(A) Wahhabism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
(founded and named after Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792 [born and died in present-day Saudi Arabia); has been variously described as "ultraconservative," or "puritan(ical)" )
(B) Salafi movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi_movement
(advocated a return to the traditions of the salaf)
(ii)
(A) The term -- the mother of all political Islam -- is in quotation marks, because he used, if not coined, it. See Jamal Khashoggi
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi
("I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam — and even describes itself as an Islamic state in its 'Higher Law.' (We avoid the term 'constitution' because of its secular interpretation and often say that the Koran is our constitution.)" )
(B) Political Islam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Islam

(f) Quotation 5.
(i) bang up (vt): "to cause extensive damage to"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bang%20up
(ii) bang up: "PHRASAL VERB [TRANSITIVE] [USUALLY PASSIVE] INFORMAL  AMERICAN to damage something such as a vehicle  <How did your truck get all banged up?>"
https://www.macmillandictionary. ... /american/bang-up_1