Subject: Re: Sources for Friedman Piece
From: "Bishop, Justin" <Justin_Bishop@condenast.com>
Date: 3/4/09, 12:24
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

Re: Sources for Friedman Piece Looks good on that front... I’m a bit worried about the unemployment numbers, however.  I see a slight rise from 2002-2004, where it remains pretty steady around 4%.  Also, China’s official state unemployment figures are notoriously unreliable, right?  In the interest of time, any good sources you can point me toward on that?


On 3/4/09 11:43 AM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

J-

Here's source material regarding U.S.'s failure to sell sugar to China:

http://www.hardassetsinvestor.com/features-and-interviews/1/608-not-so-sweet-us-sugar-sales-to-asia-unlikely-to-see-boom.html?Itemid=64

Key quote: "And exactly where are those Chinese imports coming from? The Xinhua report says of the total imports, 660,000 tons, or 95.5 percent, came from Cuba, Thailand, Guatemala, the Republic of Korea, Brazil and Australia. Even the imports from Cuba, Brazil and Australia went down, while those from Thailand and Guatemala went up. They’d have to really work those field reps to improve the U.S. position on this list."

Regarding wheat:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/whs/may04/whs04D01/whs04D01.pdf

To summarize, China has actually decreased its imports of American wheat over the past twelve years; as of 2007, U.S. wheat sales to China were down over 81% from 2003 – by which time China's total wheat imports had already fallen well below those of 1997.