China is screwing Brazil - watch out America!

Daniela Liu teaches Chinese to Brazilians in Sao Paulo

A message for America
Chinese imports are wiping out Brazilian companies and jobs

• Chinese currency manipulation
• Illegal dumping of Chinese products through third countries
• Then a Chinese takeover of the markets where Brazilian companies were forced out

I have an old special event t-shirt in my closet from about 1992.  It was made in America.  A shirt made in America, by American workers, by an American company, that paid taxes to the American government.

Honestly, I believe American politicians are not just crooks but they are stone cold stupid.

The policies passed into law by idiot politcal hacks have allowed entire American industries to be closed down and shipped to other nations.

Now the same thing is happening in Brazil.  Brazilian politicians looking for fast money and easy fixes (and perhaps getting under the table payoffs) are allowing industries in Brazil to be closed down by China.

The Los Angeles Times reports that at the height of Brazil's biggest economic boom in a generation, the Schmidt Bros. shoe factory in the southwestern city of Campo Grande was shutting its doors this spring and sending thousands of employees packing.

"Hopefully, most of the workers are finding new jobs in the shoe industry," said Heitor Klein, director of the Brazilian Footwear Industries Assn., "because they had become highly skilled workers after spending their lives there."

Klein puts much of the blame on cheap imports from China, which he accuses of dumping goods at under-market prices by simply routing them through other countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia, in what he called a violation of international trade laws.

Team spirit made in China - soccer shoes carrying the Brazilian national flag.
Through currency manipulation and product dumping, China is putting companies
in Brazil out of business and then taking over the market for themselves.

An undervalued Chinese currency also has some here calling foul, with the finance minister last week accusing Beijing of currency manipulation.

Brazil's Congress has passed legislation requiring approval of large foreign purchases of land, fearing Chinese land grabs in the valuable farm belt. And an over-reliance on exports of basic items such as iron ore and soy has led to fear of "de-industrialization."

Since 2000, Brazilian exports to China have increased more than fortyfold.

"The risk of a blowback has always been sort of hanging over Brazilian industry since 2004, when [Chinese officials] visited Brazil and pressured the government to sign on the dotted line of documents certifying China as a market economy," said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.

 Fleischer says the relationship has nevertheless turned out to be positive on balance for Brazil, because of the flood of cash into nonindustrial sectors.

"The worst affected are certainly textiles and shoe producers," Fleischer said. "There are cases of Chinese imports wiping out Brazilian firms, then the Chinese came to Brazil and recruited the unemployed shoemakers and brought them to China. They wanted to learn what Brazil had learned in the '70s, how to make a shoe fit the American foot."

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