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How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

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Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#301

Post by edm0nd »

overfeed wrote: post #292
ebruchez wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like official Chinese propaganda. This was truer at some point, but things have started turning bad for China with the advent of Xi Jinping. 20-25 years ago, the country was hopeful, developing fast, opening up. Foreigners started moving there, seeing it as a new land of opportunity. Much of that is gone. The economy is in bad shape, youth unemployment is massive, the country is a dictatorship, nobody wan…

> This sounds like official Chinese propaganda Go to any top-N American University, pick a random STEM faculty and count the number of Chinese (nationality) post-grads, post-docs and faculty. Alternatively, look at the trajectory of science publications coming out of Chinese universities vs the US. Underestimating China's brain-trust is doing oneself a disservice.

and on the flipside, the Chinese government routinely uses this same route for espionage and theft of American academia and STEM research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Unite...

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#302

Post by [deleted] »

ttoinou wrote: post #73
bpt3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their population is declining, and they are a long way away from parity with the west on a per-capita basis. I think China missed their opportunity. Also, the UK hasn't dominated finance for a century and has never been dominant in services, so it doesn't seem like an apt comparison.

But look at per capita per purchasing power

[deleted]

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#303

Post by stronglikedan »

rayiner wrote: post #42

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…

> Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes.

The vast majority of us were over that decades ago. Please catch up for the sake of all humanity.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#304

Post by thfuran »

ebruchez wrote: post #254
thfuran wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was before the US decided to shoot itself in the face with economic policy.

Yes, but this will likely hurt China as well. You can't assume only the US will be hurt by this.

I don't. I'm saying all prior bets are off, though I do think US is going to be in the center of the nexus of pain, even if China is also hurt.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#305

Post by profsummergig »

rayiner wrote: post #42

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…

> Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes.

I blame Peter Zeihan for this kind of thinking. His views are immensely popular in the very powerful and influential circles. And he constantly derides China's capabilities. Since 2014 he's been saying it's going to collapse any day now. He still says it.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#306

Post by matt-p »

Symbiote wrote: post #294
matt-p wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit is mad, driven by nostalgia etc. However, if we got a free trade agreement with the US would the inverse be true, EU companies are better off moving to the UK due to brexit? What about just a FTA with all commonwealth countries (why haven't we done this??)?

Trump is unpredictable. He made a new free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico in his previous term, but has put tariffs on some Canadian goods this time round. That isn't going to reassure investors. A FTA with the USA would come at a significant price — the UK would be pressured to accept low-quality American agricultural produce, and lower many other standards from their current European level. If it does this,…

Hard to say that's the exact compromise he'd want, as you say he's unpredictable.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#307

Post by lolinder »

josefresco wrote: post #237
jimt1234 wrote: post #178

Sorta related: Those Crocs/clogs shoes have been extremely popular for a few years now. ... I've always wondered how much it costs to make that type of shoes (Crocs/clogs) - it can't cost more than $1 to make most of them; they're just injection-molded, right?

You can buy Croc knockoffs at the "Dollar Store" yet Crocs still exists. Why? Is it purely first-mover advantage/brand or is there an engineering edge?

I had a pair of knockoffs that were passable for limited purposes but certainly didn't pass muster as my primary shoe. I thought that the style just wasn't my thing. Then I got a pair of real Crocs and they very quickly became my go to for most purposes.

I don't know enough about shoes to explain why, but the difference in comfort level was huge.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#308

Post by SoftTalker »

_diyar wrote: post #286
SoftTalker wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we switched from an import tariff to a foreign goods sales tax we could avoid this particular problem. How are these materially different in terms of what the end consumer pays?

Because tariffs are calculated based on the value of the good at the time of import, while sales-taxes would be calculated at the end. The article explains the tariff scenario. In the tax scenario, Nike can operate like in the pre-tariff world, while the retailer would have to charge the tax.

But the consumer is still the one who can either afford the shoe or not. He doesn't care who is collecting the tax or where in the pipeline it is assessed.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#309

Post by flir »

eyko wrote: post #258
myrmidon wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fishing is less profitable for the whole UK than Warhammer. This sounded completely insane to me. I tried to look up numbers and found that Games Workshop brings in > 0.5 billion in revenue (!!), compared to all of UKs fisheries at 1 billion-ish (profit margins are, as you'd expect, pretty favorable for the plastic figurines that they don' even paint for you). Thanks for this interesting fact.

It's also worth considering that certain industries (fisheries and agriculture for instance) are subsidised. It's in our national interest to maintain production capacity, so profits are the least of our concerns. Both the UK and the EU's agricultural sectors are heavily subsidised mainly for this reason. It's cheaper to import than to produce locally, especially with our environmental standards and targets, but we n…

While not disagreeing with you, I don't think we've done a great job of maintaining fisheries.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#310

Post by matt-p »

rayiner wrote: post #291
pjc50 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now The thing is .. there's a point here, but it's not at all tied in with physical products. People are obsessed with one side of the ledger while refusing to see the other. Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues. Things where the state is unavoidably involved and having better, more decisive lead…

The free traders also need to accept the reality that the UK’s decline started long before Brexit and disputes about fishing. In terms of per capita GDP, the UK lost its edge over the rest of Europe in the 1970s, and then simply never recovered from the 2008 global financial collapse. Without the empire, the UK’s “competitive advantage” in financial and legal services wasn’t worth shit. I strongly suspect the US cann…

I think Germany is a bit of a special case due to what happened after the war, I think a more objective comparison might be say France.
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