In The News

The Shrimp Wars

Christina Hoag April 19, 2004
When American wild pink shrimp caught in the ocean are sold for $18.99 a pound while farmed shrimp from Thailand are only sold at $7.99, the market is going to tilt. In recent years, American shrimpers have found it increasingly difficult to maintain their business – ten years ago there were 5,000 shrimp trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico, but today only about 1,900 are left. The Southern Shrimp...

Looking for a Villain, and Finding One in China

Eduardo Porter April 18, 2004
A couple years ago, economists warned that China was exporting deflation to the US. Now that is over, but many still see China as the problem. To some, China is a big cause of inflation, and economists, businessmen and politicians have blamed it for every economic woe. "China is choking off the profits of American companies with its hunger for commodities pushing up the price of raw...

Outsourcing, Turned Inside Out

Ken Belson April 11, 2004
While most Americans today have heard about and many already been alarmed by the outsourcing of jobs overseas, some others might not be as worried; those include the employees of South Korean semiconductor company Samsung in Austin, Texas. The company just announced that it would pump another $500 into its Texas plant, adding an additional 300 jobs to its 700-people workforce. Samsung is not...

Pentagon Seeks to Use Foreign Airlines

Micheline Maynard April 10, 2004
When the war in Iraq broke out and American troops and equipment were being transported half way across the world to the Middle East, people realized that not all the carriers involved in the transportation were in the US Air Force fleet. Instead, American owned commercial airlines did a large part of the job. Recently, however, the Pentagon announced that it wanted to include foreign airlines...

A Shortage of Seasonal Workers Is Feared

Eduardo Porter April 10, 2004
As the summer approaches, many American companies have started their seasonal worker recruitment process, but when employers went to the US Departments of Labor and Homeland Security to submit their visa applications for their foreign employees, they found out that this year's 66,000 limit for the H-2B visa, a visa for temporary foreign workers, was already reached, putting many of the...

R & D: India's New Star Industry

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar April 10, 2004
American multinational companies are setting up research and development (R & D) centers in India, participating in a new trend in the contemporary era of global capitalism - the outsourcing of production activities.. No longer content to only look overseas for low-wage service sector jobs like call centers, large US corporations are tapping into the technical expertise and specialized...

Kenya: Globalizing with Flowers

Jean-Pierre Lehmann April 9, 2004
Although Kenya has attracted some foreign dollars through tourism and export-based flower and tea industries, a majority of Kenyans remain mired in poverty. Jean-Pierre Lehmann, founding director of the Evian group, argues here that although its future could be bright, Kenya has not yet exploited its substantial political and economic assets in a way that will allow it to fully tap into...