Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Sept 7, 2015 (III)

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(5) Nick Leiber,  Portuguese Shoemakers Get Fancy.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/ar ... hoemakers-get-fancy

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Companies threatened by China bet on Italian-grade quality and speed
(b) "Alberto Sousa and his son, Filipe, are survivors. When their shoe factory northeast of Porto began losing clients to China a decade ago, the family-owned business revamped its strategy."

Porto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto
(the second-largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon; has been referred to as the origin of the name "Portugal;" One of Portugal's internationally famous exports, port wine, is named for Porto)
(c) "Portuguese shoes now command the world’s second-highest average export price after Italy—almost $32, compared with about $4.50 for shoes made in China, according to the manufacturers’ association. That’s up from $21.38 in 2004."

It is unclear whether the statistics are inflation-adjusted.

(d) "Equipped with tools like precision, high-speed waterjet cutters, factories can profitably produce small batches of multiple styles for luxury designers. Thanks to such investments, Portugal’s factories are more flexible than their Asian counterparts, and faster, says João Maia, executive director of the leather goods association."
(i) Waterjet Cutter: How It Works. Big Blue Saw, undated
https://www.bigbluesaw.com/faqs/ ... t-cutting-work.html
("The process is essentially the same as water erosion found in nature but accelerated and concentrated by orders of magnitude")
(ii) João is Portuguese version of John.

(e) "The world’s biggest apparel retailer, Inditex"
(i) Inditex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inditex
(full name: Industria de Diseño Textil, SA; headquartered in Galicia, Spain; owns brands like Massimo Dutti [and] Zara)
(ii) Spanish English dictionary
diseño (noun masculine; from Italian disegno): "a design"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diseño
(iii) The Italian surname Massimo: from the personal name Massimo (Latin maximus greatest, superlative of [Latin adjective masculine] magnus great)

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(6) Carter Dougherty and Nacha Cattan, Mexico Throws a Wrench into Trade Talks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/ar ... ch-into-trade-talks

Quote:

In the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) negotiation, "Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo * * * is fighting to ensure that the TPP does not jeopardize gains his country has made under the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated tariffs on goods shipped between Canada, Mexico, and the US. [American automakers] all expanded production south of the Rio Grande after the deal took effect in 1994 to take advantage of duty-free access to the US market and Mexico’s low wages. European and Japanese manufacturers did the same. Last year, Mexico overtook Japan to become the second-largest exporter of vehicles to the US, behind Canada.

If TPP comes into effect, Japan’s automakers will "be allowed to ship vehicles to North America duty-free * * * (The US levies a 2.5 percent duty on autos and 25 percent on light trucks from outside the Nafta area.)

"Technically, the tussle is over so-called rules of origin. Under Nafta, a vehicle must get 62.5 percent of its content from inside the free-trade area to qualify for duty-free treatment. Japan has been pressing for a lower threshold of 30 percent, as its automakers, including Renault-Nissan and Toyota Motor, get many of their components from China and Thailand, countries that aren’t part of the TPP negotiations. Washington agreed to meet Tokyo somewhere in the middle in bilateral talks that preceded the larger meeting in July in Maui. The Mexicans, as well as the Canadians, weren’t pleased.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: The nation is opposed to granting Japan concessions on autos
(b) “its [Japan’s] automakers, including Renault-Nissan and Toyota Motor, get many of their components from China and Thailand”

Those are Japanese automakers in Thailand and China, not indigenous carmakers. See Yasu Ota, Rules of Origin Could Be Key to Spreading TPP Across Asia. Nikkei, Aug 24, 2015
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics- ... ing-TPP-across-Asia
("The area around Bangkok is a major manufacturing base with the highest concentration of Japanese makers in" ASEAN)

There is no need to read the rest of Nikkei report.