Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Jan 30, 2017 (III)

choi

(1) Brendan Greeley, David Welch and Austin Weinstein, Trump Threatens to Undo Nafta's Auto Alley.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... -nafta-s-auto-alley

1 1/2 consecutive paragraphs:

"It's impossible to know what benefits may have been lost with TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership], which died before it ever came into force. What is certain, however, is that Nafta has benefited the auto industry in North America, and unraveling it may cut more jobs than it brings back.

"Under Nafta's common market, a supply chain of automotive assembly lines and parts makers has developed over the past 20 years, stretching some 2,500 miles, from Toronto through Detroit and the US Midwest and south to the Mexican border states. This auto alley employs more than 1.5 million people; and though it encompasses three countries, it functions as one integrated production region, says Thomas Klier, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

My comment:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Brendan Greeley, David Welch and Austin Weinstein, Trump
(b) There is no need to read the rest of this report.

(2) Ian King and Alex Webb, Apple Tries Full-Court Press.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... f-phone-margin-grab
("In its last five fiscal years, Qualcomm has turned $37 billion of licensing revenue into $32 billion of pretax profit. Its gross margin, or the percentage of revenue remaining after deducting the cost of production, is 61 percent [compared with Apple's and Samsung's, both at 39%] and is predicted by analysts to widen. * * * Now, the handset companies pay Qualcomm a percentage of the total selling price of the phone -- a sum measured in hundreds of dollars -- regardless of whether they use Qualcomm chips or not [chips from other companies rely on Qulacomm's patents and pay Qualcomm licensing fees]. The phone makers, backed by regulators, want a change that would force Qualcomm to charge the fees on the price of its components -- an amount based in the tens of dollars")

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Its lawsuit against Qualcomm is a bid for better licensing deals
(b) For the same claims, Apple also simultaneously sues Qualcomm in Beijing.
(c) The print version is not completely the same as the online one. The quotation above is from the online version.

choi

(3) Pavel Alpeyev, A Real Mr Fusion Feeds on Used Clothing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... -clothing-into-fuel

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: A Tokyo company aims to make fabric recycling common practice
(b) "At the end of the movie Back to the Future, mad scientist Emmett 'Doc' Brown reappears with his time-traveling DeLorean, newly powered by garbage thanks to a fictional recycling reactor from the future called Mr Fusion."

DeLorean DMC-12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_DMC-12
(manufactured by [American] John DeLorean's DeLorean Motor Company [1975-1982 (bankruptcy); based in Detroit])

(c) "Recycling plastics, paper, and metals is common, but much of the clothing produced annually around the world ends up in landfills and incinerators. 'Only 10 percent of clothing gets recycled, and that includes secondhand sales,' says Masaki TAKAO 髙尾 正樹, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Jeplan. 'That's true in every country.'  Takao and his team are working on a technique that extracts polyester fibers from clothing * * * Takao left graduate school to found Jeplan in 2007 with Michihiko IWAMOTO 岩元 美智彦 [a man], a textile salesman for trading companies. The company collaborated with Osaka University
(i) Jeplan, Inc  日本環境設計株式会社 (headquartered in Tokyo; the name is shortened from "Japan Environmental PLANning")
(ii) from the company's website:

"代表取締役会長 [chairman]　岩元 美智彦
代表取締役社長 [CEO]　髙尾 正樹"

(d) "The company has placed used-clothing collection boxes in 2,100 locations throughout Japan, including at the malls, and teamed with Ryōhin Keikaku[, Inc (株式会社)良品計画; name of a company, not of a person], the owner of retailer Muji"
(i) Muji
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muji
("is distinguished by its design minimalism * * * avoidance of waste in * * * packaging, and no-logo or 'no-brand' policy.  The name Muji is derived from the first part of Mujirushi Ryōhin, translated as No Brand Quality Goods on Muji's European website")

* Seiyu 西友 launched clothing brand Muji in 1980 and spun it off under a new company 良品計画. Thereafter Seiyu sold itself to Wal-Mart.
(ii) Japanese-English dictionary:
* mu-jirushi 無印 【むじるし】 (n): "unlabeled; unbranded"
* mujirushi shōhin無印商品 【むじるししょうひん】 (n): "unbranded goods"
   ^ shirushi 印(P); 標; 証 【しるし】 (n): "(esp. 印, 標) mark; sign"  (The first "sh" is softened to "ji" because the former is placed in the middle. not the beginning, of a compound word.)

(e) Jeplan's website does not even mention cotton recycling -- only polyester.  See Technology. Jeplan, Inc, undated
http://www.jeplan.co.jp/en/technology/polyester_recycle/
("Polyester fiber is used for producing about 60 percent (approximately 40 million tons) of clothing annually and much of the fiber’s raw material is derived from petroleum resources. * * * BHET, the (polyester monomer), is produced by depolymerization of the polyester in ethylene glycol solution, then BHET is purified and various impurities are removed. The purified BHET is then further polymerized to obtain polyester resin")

choi

(4) Brad Stone, How Uber and Airbnb Fought City Halls, Won Over the Citizenry, Outlasted Rivals, and Figured Out the Sharing Economy. (one of the three feature stories)
https://www.bloomberg.com/featur ... nb-99-billion-idea/

Note: This report is about the very early days of the two companies, when they were nobodies.