China has been known as the “world factory” for too long for anyone to expect trade deficit. Its trade numbers was surprising as it registered a $7.3 billion trade deficit, its first since last March. The growth rate for import beats that of export. As mentioned in the article, this is likely due to the Chinese New Year as factories had longer than expected holidays. The holiday tends to last a few weeks rather than the few days set as public holiday. This has left the factory empty and lead to decrease in exports produced. I agree with the author but the increase in import is also an important factor contributing to the trade deficit. With China’s booming economy, the Chinese consumers are getting richer and their spending power increases. They are more willing and able to afford more expensive imported products that are deemed to have better quality than local produce. This may lead us thinking this may occur regularly and China will no longer be the country of exports, but not so fast. The impact of Chinese New Year on export is bigger than that of import. The privileged rich ones are still limited and the vast majority would still be unable to afford imports.

I refer to Sarah Zhou’s blog post “Farewell HMV“, dated November 17^th,  2011. I agree with her to a large extent. HWV is closing its store in Downtown Vancouver. Just like Blockbuster went bankrupt and Netflix took over it, online resources, both legal and illegal, are driving HMV out of business. People
nowadays have changed their taste and preference of consuming music and movie
products, few of them would want to go to a store to get them on disc. People will most likely use their computers to play and copy them into the computers and buying online seems a better and cheaper option. For a store mainly selling music and movies on disc, it is hard to survive as there are various alternatives where you can get the virtually the same thing for a much lower cost if at all. The pirated versions on Internet are of high quality nowadays and cost nothing. Even though HMV tried to move it sales to online downloading, it is not working as almost 90% of the legal downloads are done through iTunes. HMV loses out in terms of innovation and this has led to its downfall.

I refer to Rikh’s blog post “Hermès sells saris in India“, dated October 7th, 2011. I agree with him to a certain extent.  With growing wealth in India, Indian consumers’ spending power is growing at a rapid rate. In midst of the economic downtown, every company is trying its best to increase profits to survive through. Opening up new market in India is one of the best ways to do it. There is a large market for luxury as the rich ones look beyond basic needs. Hermes’s decision to sell saris in India is a risky one. Though this may open up new markets to increase its revenue, it is a tough one. It is competing against the established local designers in the market. People may have already developed a brand loyalty to these brands and maybe unwilling to switch to other brands. Hermes needs a massive amount of marketing to break into the market.  Even if Hermes’ saris are good, it will be labeled as Westernized and Indians may have a feeling against it. Thus, they may choose local saris over Hermes’. Hermes still have a long way to go in this market.

With the new immigration law implemented, Alabama farm and fishery owners found themselves almost workerless. Most of their employees were illegal Hispanic immigrants and they went missing the day the law took effect.  The law was intended to free jobs from immigrants for Alabamians to survive the recession. However, Americans are not filling up the large number of job offerings despite the recession. Few would work for a dirty and tiring job for minimum wages and no benefits. Many deem these jobs as ‘immigrant jobs’ and feel they are too good for them. This leads to a shortage of labor when the immigrants were driven out by laws. What was intended as a beneficial law backfired and the industry faces big challenges ahead. The Governor, Bentley,  would have to be responsible for these if he wants to stay where he is. Unless  the industry makes some changes to the way it operates, it will not be able to  attract local workers and would be better-offed without the immigration law. However, this is unlikely to happen in the short term. Alabama industry owners would not have suffer such losses should Bentley heeds the advice of the Governor of the neighboring Georgia state.

Dell Inc. is founded by entrepreneur Michael Dell. He began PC’s unlimited
out of a storefront as a college freshmen and Dell computers were born from this in 1987. In 1996, Dell started selling computers over the Web, the same year his company launched its first servers. Dell Inc. soon reported about $1 million in sales per day from dell.com. The service is so convenient that you can request your made-to-order Dell computer within 36 hours by calling a toll free number. This convenience helped Dell to expand market share and become one of the biggest computer producer in the world. In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. reached a world market share of 12.8 percent, passing Compaq to become the world’s largest PC maker. Dell has generated wealth at a rate much faster than if he were to work for any company. The speed and amount of wealth creation is unimaginable. With Dell’s innovation, the risk he took paid off tremendously, both in terms of wealth and fame.