The teddy bears selling for $1.40 in Shanghai's IKEA store may be just about the cheapest in town, but they're not made in China they're stitched and stuffed in Indonesia.
The fluffy brown toys reflect a new challenge for China: Its huge
economy, which has long offered some of the world's lowest manufacturing costs, is losing its claim on cheapness as factories get squeezed by rising prices for energy, materials and labor.Those expenses, plus higher taxes and stricter enforcement of labor and environmental standards, are causing some manufacturers to leave for lower-cost markets such as Vietnam, Indonesia and India.
Costs have climbed so much that three-quarters of businesses surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai believe China is losing its competitive edge.
Wait, you mean to tell me that if China doesn't have access to near slave labor and corner cuts that they may *gasp* be less competitive then we previously thought? Perish the thought!
Couple that with it's 1.5 billion citizens, and you have a recipe for disaster. Everyone knows that China cuts corners everywhere and makes shoddy merchandise.
What manufacturers would be smart to do is open up a plant in the middle of nowhere inside the USA, hire a bunch of workers at a slightly better then average wage, and slap a Made in the USA sticker on their product.
People still remember the fiasco of China's lead paint incidents, so if you push out your product, hike the price up slightly to avoid the pinch, I'm quite sure that people would be a lot more receptive to buying your product knowing it was made in Alabama or Montana, rather than Beijing.
Don't believe me? Then why is Google, which employs some of the smartest people on the planet, building a datacenter in The Dalles, Oregon?
Travis
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