September 1997 Edition
TEXTILES
The Clinton administration has issued a report which says that, since the NAFTA came into effect in 1994, it has prompted a shift in the growth of textile and apparel trade from Asia to the NAFTA countries. U.S. imports of all textile products from Asia's four biggest suppliers declined in quantity by 13 per cent while equivalent imports from Canada and Mexico more than doubled. For U.S. fabric producers, imports from Mexico are also job-savers since nearly two-thirds of these shipments are made out of U.S.-supplied yarns.
RENOVATIONS
Canadian homeowners spent $11.9 billion repairing and renovating their dwellings in 1996, an amount virtually unchanged from the previous year. However, the average expenditure for this type of work reached its lowest level since 1987, when the data were first collected. On average, homeowners spent approximately $1,600 to improve and maintain their homes. This figure is considerably below the peak of approximately $2,200 that homeowners spent on average in 1989.
MOONLIGHTING
Growth in moonlighting over the past two decades has been much stronger than the increase in employment in general. Between 1976 and 1996, the number of workers holding a second job more than tripled, from 208,000 to 699,000, compared with overall employment growth of 40%. In 1996, 1 in 20 workers, or 5%, held more than one job. Twenty years ago the rate was 1 in 50. On the whole, moonlighting means more work hours. While the average work week for all workers in 1996 was 37.1 hours, the average for moonlighters was 46.2.
MALAYSIA
This country boasts an eight per cent annual economic growth, a strong industrial base, a rising middle class, shopping malls and skyscrapers. Just as it emulated Japan to move beyond rubber and palm oil production into cars and electronic components, its new strategy is to jump into software, high-speed networks and digital entertainment. The centrepiece is a giant project costing $8- to $15 billion (U.S.) of public and private money and named the Multimedia Super Corridor. A 1.6 kilometre by 48 kilometre tract, it will be a multibillion dollar test-bed, wired with the latest technology where Malaysians and foreigners can try out new ideas. Also under construction is a new government centre, with a paperless bureaucracy designed to usher in an era of electronic government.
MINING
This is B.C.'s second biggest resource industry and provides its almost 10,000 employees with wages averaging $73,000 a year. But profits have been steadily eroding over the past 10 years to the point that even though mining generated $3.87 billion in revenues, its net income in 1996 was only $208 million--a 59 per cent decline from 1995. Mining ranks third in terms of economic value to the province, behind forestry and tourism.
TRENDS
In 1992, 32 million Americans, 12 per cent of the population, lived in gated communities, condominiums, elderly only communities and residential country clubs that are privately owned and have their own security guards. Today there are 50 million.
DIET
Per capita meat consumption fell to its lowest level in 20 years in 1996 as Canadians continued a long-term trend of including more low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese, poultry, rice and nuts in their diet. Canadians have shifted away from red meat, whole milk and alcoholic beverages. Last year each Canadian ate less than 90 kilograms of meat - beef, pork and poultry - down 2 kilograms per person from five years ago. While per capita cheese consumption has held more or less steady over the past five years, the 10.7 kg consumed per person in 1996 was 56% higher than two decades ago.
GIFTWARE
Industry Canada estimates that the giftware industry in Canada is worth $600 million and employs 45,000 manufacturers, artists and artisans. Currently, export sales for the industry are up 22 per cent, with most shipments being sent to the United States, Western Europe and Japan.
HONG KONG
This territory is the fourth-largest source of foreign investment in the world. The gross domestic product, with 6.3 million people, comes to more than 20 per cent of China's total GDP based on a population of 1.2 billion and more than 60 per cent of external investment in China comes from Hong Kong.
TRANSFERS
Proximity to family is playing a greater role in an employee's decision to relocate and remains the No. 1 reason for declining a transfer. Seventy-five per cent of employees who rejected transfers last year did so because of a desire to remain near their families. The Atlas Van Lines annual survey of 165 U.S. and Canadian companies found that spousal employment has also become a major consideration for employees considering changing cities for their job, moving ahead of living costs as the No. 2 determinant.
FLOWERS
With total annual sales of more than $1 billion, the Ontario floriculture industry is growing at 4 per cent a year, faster than the Canadian economy.
AIRLINES
Air Canada is winning the battle for airline business between Canada and the U.S. despite competition from some of the largest and most aggressive airlines in the world. Air Canada continues to expand while heavyweights such as American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta are pulling back following the open skies treaty of February 1995. Air Canada is flying 88,000 seats to and from the U.S. every week this summer compared with Canadian Airline's 26,000. American Airlines has 36,000 seats, followed by Northwest and Delta with 30,000 each.
INVESTMENT
Canadian business and government plan to invest a record $110.9 billion in plant and equipment in 1997, an 11% increase from 1996. This is the fourth consecutive gain and the largest annual increase in investment since 1993. The growth is evident in many sectors of the economy, most notably the service producing industries which account for 54% of the increase. This latest survey shows much stronger investment for 1997 with an increase of $6.6 billion from what was originally planned earlier this year. Revised spending intentions are based on a sample survey of 23,000 businesses, governments and institutions which had a 77 per cent response rate.
ASSETS
By the end of 1997, there will be $1.8 trillion in structures and equipment being used to produce goods and services in the economy. This amounts to more than $125,000 of capital resources per person at work. This capital endowment of employees has increased by about 60% since the mid-1970s. The strong increase in assets has been especially notable in machinery and equipment, indicating that the economy has been incorporating the latest technological innovations at a rapid rate. The drive by industries to become more productive and competitive in the global economy lies behind this rapid build-up of assets.
TREASURE
Prospectors have moored a barge in the Ottawa River at the end of a sewer pipe hoping to salvage gold and silver in the mud from the Royal Canadian Mint. They are hoping to scoop one million ounces of gold, which at current prices would be worth around $420 million. Stories about flushed minerals began in the early 1900s. With a waste rate of 2 or 3 per cent, compared with less than one per cent today, a lot of gold went out of the pipes at the mint into about 25 metres of water in the bay.
LAWNS
5.5 million power mowers are sold annually in the U.S. But the hot product this summer has been the push-powered lawn mower. Apparently, fit-conscious, noise-conscious and environmentally conscious people are anxious to get back to basics. The American Lawn Mower Co. sold 250,000 of them last year, up nearly 150 per cent over five years ago. Sales are predicted to hit 300,00 this year and keep climbing at 20 per cent to 30 per cent annually. They are selling faster now than they did during the 1940s and 1950s when there were no alternatives.
SIZE
Two American car makers became the world's biggest companies in 1996 (ranked by sales), displacing the three Japanese trading giants that had topped the list for the previous two years. General Motors tops the Fortune 500 list with sales of $168 billion. Ford came second at $147 billion. Of the world's 15 biggest companies, the only one that was neither Japanese nor American was Royal Dutch Shell, a European oil company.
GREEN
A growing demand in China for organically grown foods will shortly be worth $2.5 billion a year. According to a recent survey, more than 70 per cent of Shanghai residents are dissatisfied with current availability and variety and the city is one of the first areas to produce green food.
FOOTWEAR
Canadian manufacturers produced 4,811,354 pairs of footwear in the second quarter of 1997, an increase of 12.5% from the 4,275,303 pairs produced in the same quarter a year earlier. Year-to-date production totalled 8,716,155 (revised) pairs of footwear, up 4.7% from the 8,323,801 pairs produced during the same period in 1996.
RUBBER
According to Fortune magazine, plantations along the South China Sea are the source of 93 per cent of the world's natural rubber. If the South American leaf blight somehow crossed the Pacific, it could wipe them out. At least a third of the rubber in every tire comes from a tree. Without natural rubber, airplanes could not land safely and the trucking industry would be crippled. Doctors and hospital administrators have also learned that they depend on natural rubber for a host of crucial products.
WEATHER
Newly analyzed data from 5,400 weather stations around the world indicates global warming is happening mostly at night and mostly in winter at high latitudes. Warmer evenings could mean longer growing seasons, between frosts, in Canada and Siberia. At the same time, fewer hard midwinter freezes might allow more soil-dwelling agricultural pests to survive the cold months. No one is yet certain if farmers would come out ahead or not.
GAS
Surging natural gas demand is set to make Asia the biggest global energy user by 2010. Huge projects with a combined price tag of $60 billion (U.S.) are moving ahead. Gas consumption in Asia will more than double in the next 13 years as its share in overall energy use, now only 6 per cent, rises closer to the 30 per cent share that gas holds in U.S. consumption. Japan forecasts that total Asian energy demand will reach 3.3 billion tons of oil equivalent in 2010, 10 per cent more than in North America, today's top-ranking energy consumer.
JAPAN
-Japanese comic books are $1 billion dollar industry that account for a third of the country's publishing output.
-When the Fukui Chamber of Commerce in Japan did a survey to discover what people considered to be a long line-up, the average answer was 274 people.
-Japan's squid fleet is so huge that when it switches on all its lights in the North Pacific at night to draw squid to its nets, it can be seen by orbiting astronauts.
Thank you for reading the A & A Economic News Digest. For more information visit our website www.aacb.com or contact A & A Contract Customs Brokers Ltd. at strehler@aacb.com.
Past issues of the A&A Economic News Digest can be found at http://www.aacb.com/publications/ed/index.asp
The Clinton administration has issued a report which says that, since the NAFTA came into effect in 1994, it has prompted a shift in the growth of textile and apparel trade from Asia to the NAFTA countries. U.S. imports of all textile products from Asia's four biggest suppliers declined in quantity by 13 per cent while equivalent imports from Canada and Mexico more than doubled. For U.S. fabric producers, imports from Mexico are also job-savers since nearly two-thirds of these shipments are made out of U.S.-supplied yarns.
RENOVATIONS
Canadian homeowners spent $11.9 billion repairing and renovating their dwellings in 1996, an amount virtually unchanged from the previous year. However, the average expenditure for this type of work reached its lowest level since 1987, when the data were first collected. On average, homeowners spent approximately $1,600 to improve and maintain their homes. This figure is considerably below the peak of approximately $2,200 that homeowners spent on average in 1989.
MOONLIGHTING
Growth in moonlighting over the past two decades has been much stronger than the increase in employment in general. Between 1976 and 1996, the number of workers holding a second job more than tripled, from 208,000 to 699,000, compared with overall employment growth of 40%. In 1996, 1 in 20 workers, or 5%, held more than one job. Twenty years ago the rate was 1 in 50. On the whole, moonlighting means more work hours. While the average work week for all workers in 1996 was 37.1 hours, the average for moonlighters was 46.2.
MALAYSIA
This country boasts an eight per cent annual economic growth, a strong industrial base, a rising middle class, shopping malls and skyscrapers. Just as it emulated Japan to move beyond rubber and palm oil production into cars and electronic components, its new strategy is to jump into software, high-speed networks and digital entertainment. The centrepiece is a giant project costing $8- to $15 billion (U.S.) of public and private money and named the Multimedia Super Corridor. A 1.6 kilometre by 48 kilometre tract, it will be a multibillion dollar test-bed, wired with the latest technology where Malaysians and foreigners can try out new ideas. Also under construction is a new government centre, with a paperless bureaucracy designed to usher in an era of electronic government.
MINING
This is B.C.'s second biggest resource industry and provides its almost 10,000 employees with wages averaging $73,000 a year. But profits have been steadily eroding over the past 10 years to the point that even though mining generated $3.87 billion in revenues, its net income in 1996 was only $208 million--a 59 per cent decline from 1995. Mining ranks third in terms of economic value to the province, behind forestry and tourism.
TRENDS
In 1992, 32 million Americans, 12 per cent of the population, lived in gated communities, condominiums, elderly only communities and residential country clubs that are privately owned and have their own security guards. Today there are 50 million.
DIET
Per capita meat consumption fell to its lowest level in 20 years in 1996 as Canadians continued a long-term trend of including more low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese, poultry, rice and nuts in their diet. Canadians have shifted away from red meat, whole milk and alcoholic beverages. Last year each Canadian ate less than 90 kilograms of meat - beef, pork and poultry - down 2 kilograms per person from five years ago. While per capita cheese consumption has held more or less steady over the past five years, the 10.7 kg consumed per person in 1996 was 56% higher than two decades ago.
GIFTWARE
Industry Canada estimates that the giftware industry in Canada is worth $600 million and employs 45,000 manufacturers, artists and artisans. Currently, export sales for the industry are up 22 per cent, with most shipments being sent to the United States, Western Europe and Japan.
HONG KONG
This territory is the fourth-largest source of foreign investment in the world. The gross domestic product, with 6.3 million people, comes to more than 20 per cent of China's total GDP based on a population of 1.2 billion and more than 60 per cent of external investment in China comes from Hong Kong.
TRANSFERS
Proximity to family is playing a greater role in an employee's decision to relocate and remains the No. 1 reason for declining a transfer. Seventy-five per cent of employees who rejected transfers last year did so because of a desire to remain near their families. The Atlas Van Lines annual survey of 165 U.S. and Canadian companies found that spousal employment has also become a major consideration for employees considering changing cities for their job, moving ahead of living costs as the No. 2 determinant.
FLOWERS
With total annual sales of more than $1 billion, the Ontario floriculture industry is growing at 4 per cent a year, faster than the Canadian economy.
AIRLINES
Air Canada is winning the battle for airline business between Canada and the U.S. despite competition from some of the largest and most aggressive airlines in the world. Air Canada continues to expand while heavyweights such as American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta are pulling back following the open skies treaty of February 1995. Air Canada is flying 88,000 seats to and from the U.S. every week this summer compared with Canadian Airline's 26,000. American Airlines has 36,000 seats, followed by Northwest and Delta with 30,000 each.
INVESTMENT
Canadian business and government plan to invest a record $110.9 billion in plant and equipment in 1997, an 11% increase from 1996. This is the fourth consecutive gain and the largest annual increase in investment since 1993. The growth is evident in many sectors of the economy, most notably the service producing industries which account for 54% of the increase. This latest survey shows much stronger investment for 1997 with an increase of $6.6 billion from what was originally planned earlier this year. Revised spending intentions are based on a sample survey of 23,000 businesses, governments and institutions which had a 77 per cent response rate.
ASSETS
By the end of 1997, there will be $1.8 trillion in structures and equipment being used to produce goods and services in the economy. This amounts to more than $125,000 of capital resources per person at work. This capital endowment of employees has increased by about 60% since the mid-1970s. The strong increase in assets has been especially notable in machinery and equipment, indicating that the economy has been incorporating the latest technological innovations at a rapid rate. The drive by industries to become more productive and competitive in the global economy lies behind this rapid build-up of assets.
TREASURE
Prospectors have moored a barge in the Ottawa River at the end of a sewer pipe hoping to salvage gold and silver in the mud from the Royal Canadian Mint. They are hoping to scoop one million ounces of gold, which at current prices would be worth around $420 million. Stories about flushed minerals began in the early 1900s. With a waste rate of 2 or 3 per cent, compared with less than one per cent today, a lot of gold went out of the pipes at the mint into about 25 metres of water in the bay.
LAWNS
5.5 million power mowers are sold annually in the U.S. But the hot product this summer has been the push-powered lawn mower. Apparently, fit-conscious, noise-conscious and environmentally conscious people are anxious to get back to basics. The American Lawn Mower Co. sold 250,000 of them last year, up nearly 150 per cent over five years ago. Sales are predicted to hit 300,00 this year and keep climbing at 20 per cent to 30 per cent annually. They are selling faster now than they did during the 1940s and 1950s when there were no alternatives.
SIZE
Two American car makers became the world's biggest companies in 1996 (ranked by sales), displacing the three Japanese trading giants that had topped the list for the previous two years. General Motors tops the Fortune 500 list with sales of $168 billion. Ford came second at $147 billion. Of the world's 15 biggest companies, the only one that was neither Japanese nor American was Royal Dutch Shell, a European oil company.
GREEN
A growing demand in China for organically grown foods will shortly be worth $2.5 billion a year. According to a recent survey, more than 70 per cent of Shanghai residents are dissatisfied with current availability and variety and the city is one of the first areas to produce green food.
FOOTWEAR
Canadian manufacturers produced 4,811,354 pairs of footwear in the second quarter of 1997, an increase of 12.5% from the 4,275,303 pairs produced in the same quarter a year earlier. Year-to-date production totalled 8,716,155 (revised) pairs of footwear, up 4.7% from the 8,323,801 pairs produced during the same period in 1996.
RUBBER
According to Fortune magazine, plantations along the South China Sea are the source of 93 per cent of the world's natural rubber. If the South American leaf blight somehow crossed the Pacific, it could wipe them out. At least a third of the rubber in every tire comes from a tree. Without natural rubber, airplanes could not land safely and the trucking industry would be crippled. Doctors and hospital administrators have also learned that they depend on natural rubber for a host of crucial products.
WEATHER
Newly analyzed data from 5,400 weather stations around the world indicates global warming is happening mostly at night and mostly in winter at high latitudes. Warmer evenings could mean longer growing seasons, between frosts, in Canada and Siberia. At the same time, fewer hard midwinter freezes might allow more soil-dwelling agricultural pests to survive the cold months. No one is yet certain if farmers would come out ahead or not.
GAS
Surging natural gas demand is set to make Asia the biggest global energy user by 2010. Huge projects with a combined price tag of $60 billion (U.S.) are moving ahead. Gas consumption in Asia will more than double in the next 13 years as its share in overall energy use, now only 6 per cent, rises closer to the 30 per cent share that gas holds in U.S. consumption. Japan forecasts that total Asian energy demand will reach 3.3 billion tons of oil equivalent in 2010, 10 per cent more than in North America, today's top-ranking energy consumer.
JAPAN
-Japanese comic books are $1 billion dollar industry that account for a third of the country's publishing output.
-When the Fukui Chamber of Commerce in Japan did a survey to discover what people considered to be a long line-up, the average answer was 274 people.
-Japan's squid fleet is so huge that when it switches on all its lights in the North Pacific at night to draw squid to its nets, it can be seen by orbiting astronauts.
Thank you for reading the A & A Economic News Digest. For more information visit our website www.aacb.com or contact A & A Contract Customs Brokers Ltd. at strehler@aacb.com.
Past issues of the A&A Economic News Digest can be found at http://www.aacb.com/publications/ed/index.asp
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