Breaking Waves
- The cupcake craze has hit Asia. Launched on the U.S. East Coast by an episode of “Sex and the City“, cupcakes have been spreading ever westward. (We even had cupcakes for our daughter’s wedding reception in Honolulu a couple years back.) Now cupcakes have hit Hong Kong, says the South China Morning Post, creating stiff competition for the city’s egg tarts.
- Hawaii has a long history of contact and trade with Russia, going back to Russian traders (and, yes, a few opportunistic imperialists) building forts on Kauai and Oahu. Ruins of the fort on Kauai can still be seen, and the legacy on Oahu is downtown Honolulu’s Fort Street Mall. A few Hawaii companies have tried exporting to Siberia, but without notable success. But the Russians are coming back. There are reports this week that Tesoro, which has a refinery on Oahu, has done a deal to buy some of the first oil to come out of the eastern end of Russia’s ESPO pipeline. One hundred thousand metric tons of Russian oil are to be delivered to Hawaii by the end of February.
- Little noticed by most U.S. media, investment by Chinese companies in U.S. companies in 2009 surpassed the value of U.S. companies’ investments in China for the first time. Chinese business investment in the United States (as elsewhere) is highly focused on resource acquisition. It will be interesting how American politicians will react (remember, these are the same folks who stopped CNOOC’s purchase of Unocal), even though the Chinese investments are likely raising U.S. employment. Already, some of our pols are raising questions about letting a Chinese firm buy GM’s Hummer division, even though the purchase will keeps plants operating and employ plenty of American auto workers.
- The Wall Street Journal carried an article this week about competition among Switzerland’s cantons to lower corporate income taxes in order to attract multinational corporations. The moral of the story, of course, is that – all else being equal – the canton that offers the lowest rates gets the business. I was intrigued by a graphic that compared the corporate tax rates of several countries. Switzerland and Ireland had the lowest rates (21.2% and 12.5%, respectively). The highest rates were the United Kingdom (28%), France (33.3%) and – you guessed it – the United States at a staggering 40%. And American politicians say they want to attract more productive investment.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded grants worth $234.5 million Friday to agricultural trade organizations for export promotion. Hawaii got a rather small piece of the action: $134,400 to the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association.
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on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 7:50 am and is filed under Business Opportunities, China, Finance & Investment, Hawaii.
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