Saturday Shorts
I’m experimenting with titles for this space. “Weekend Hits” never excited me – and I’m not sure today’s title does it. The idea is that each Saturday morning I put up a few items that catch my eye (and might interest you), but haven’t blogged about. Building on our overall “Business Beyond the Reef” them, how about something like “Breaking Waves”? “Flotsam & Jetsam”? Anybody have an idea for a catchy title?
Anyway, here are this weekend’s waves:
- We love pork in Hawaii, grinding on our favorite kalua pig, manapua and pork laulau. So, a Wall Street Journal article about a battle over pork rinds grabbed my attention. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (unusually) is making a unilateral change to loosen U.S. import restrictions on pork skins, opening up a market for Brazilian suppliers. This was done at the request of an Ohio producer of fried pork rinds (I like ‘em spicy) who finds U.S. pork skins in short supply. They are being opposed by some state agriculture departments and by competing pork rind producers, who argue to keep the imports out for fear of health problems. We’ve got chicharrones here in Hawaii, too, going back more than 100 years to our first Filipino immigrants. Yum.
- Spare a thought for poor foreign investors in Cuba. Cuba lured investors in, but then put a moratorium on sending any of their profits back out. Here’s an article in the Huffington Post about a European businessman in Havana reduced to trading Cuban food vouchers for convertible currency.
- This may take a few years, but Pakistan agreed this week with Turkey to invest $20 billion in a rail line between Istanbul and Islamabad could be big news for business in the Middle East. It currently takes at least eleven days to send a container by rail on that route, but the new line promises to cut this to as little as three days, making rail shipments from Europe as as Pakistan feasible. Now, if the Pakistanis can tie this line into the Indian rail system, we’d really have something going.
- It is encouraging that airlines are now competing for landing rights in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal reports that Iraqi Airlines now has enough traffic to justify ordering new aircraft from Boeing, despite an influx of foreign carriers into Iraqi airspace. An Iraqi Airlines spokesman takes an enlightened view: “Anything that connects Iraq to the rest of the world is good for the carrier and the country …”. Iraq’s international airports are seeing scheduled flights by Turkish Airlines, Gulf Air, Middle East Airlines, Bahrain Air and Austrian Airlines. Austrian was a stalking horse for Lufthansa, which now plans to enter the Iraqi market this summer.
- Just Monday I posted about the “Communist Capitalists” in North Korea. The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday about another money-maker for Pyongyang: monument-builder Mansudae. Seems they are going after and winning contracts to build huge statues and monuments for cheap – based on all the practice they have had at home. The WSJ piece details work they are doing in Senegal, and mentions contracts in China and Malaysia. Libya is getting interested.
- The European Union and India resumed talks this week to negotiate a free trade agreement during 2010. India did an FTA in 2009 with South Korea.
- That didn’t take long. The United Steelworkers union and four steelmaking companies in Texas and Illinois have brought the first antidumping case of the year against China. Chinese companies stand accused of selling oil well drill pipe at unfair prices. These cases take months to investigate and the mere fact that there is an investigation does not mean that the Obama Administration has taken a stand on the issue – a fine point that will predictably be lost on Beijing. Anybody can bring a case (given sufficient money for lawyers and a little evidence), but it is the decision that matters. We aren’t there yet.
