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Economy

Cheap Chinese Imports Invade Brazil’s Patron Saint Market

Chinese manufacturers have figured out a way to cash in on Brazilian Catholicism, flooding the market with inexpensive images of Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil’s patron saint. Local producers can’t compete, and want the government to intervene.

On sale: Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil's patron saint (D'Amico Rodrigo)
On sale: Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil's patron saint (D'Amico Rodrigo)

*NEWSBITES

It's not easy to be Catholic in China. But it is easy to make money from Catholicism. And for Chinese manufacturers keen to cash in on the religion, there's no better market than Brazil, whose ports are bursting with containers filled with Chinese-made images of Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil's patron saint.

Local producers, however, are now praying for help, saying there's no way they can compete with their Chinese counterparts, who are able to churn out the patron saint far more cheaply. Although they haven't yet filed an official complaint to the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, when they do, it will open a new chapter in the two countries' trade disputes.

According the Roberto Lerner Barth, president of the Commission for the Defense of Brazilian Industry, China has several strategies in place to deal with unfair competition claims. One is to create false certificates of origin. For example, before sending products to Brazil, they will send the shipment to India or Malaysia, and get a new certificate of origin. This is to avoid the anti-dumping surcharge that Brazil imposes on Chinese products.

Experts say that the government knows which products are most vulnerable to this type of manipulation, and are monitoring their importation. Whether Brazilian authorities turn their attention to Our Lady of Aparecida remains to be seen. Local producers of the favorite religious image are hoping for an intervention – divine or otherwise – before the Chinese products drive them out of business.

Read more from AméricaEconomía in Spanish

Photo -D'Amico Rodrigo

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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Future

The Smartwatch May Be The True Killer Device — Good Or Bad?

Connected watches don't just tell the time, they give meaning to life.

Photo of a person wearing a smart watch

Person wearing a smart watch

Sabine Delanglade

PARIS — By calculating the equivalent in muscle mass of the energy that powers gadgets used by humans, engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici, a Mines ParisTech professor and president of the Shift Project, concluded that a typical French person lives as if they had 600 extra workers at their disposal.

People's wrists are adorned with the equivalent power of a supercomputer — all thanks (or not) to Apple, which made the smartwatch a worldwide phenomenon when it launched the Apple Watch in 2014, just as it did with the smartphone with the 2007 launch of the iPhone.

Similar watches existed before 2014, but it was Apple that drove their dazzling success. Traditional watchmakers, who, no matter what they say, didn't really believe in them at first, are now on board. They used to talk about complications and phases of the moon, but now they're talking about operating systems.

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