1、 2000 单词， 10480 英文字符， 2200 汉字 外文翻译 原文 Globalization in the Apparel and Textile Industries:What is New and What is Not? Material Source: Locating Global Advantage: Industry Dynamics in a Globalizing Economy Stanford University Press, 2003-Forthcoming Author: Frederick H. Abernathy, John T. Dunlop, Ja
2、nice H. Hammond, and David Weil It would be disingenuous to deem globalization of the textile and apparel industries a recent phenomenon. As the above quote from Bruce Reynolds makes clear, the movement of textile and apparel products across international boundaries predates recent decades or even t
3、he twentieth century. Indeed, international trade in apparel and textile goes back well before the periods described above and has been a favorite example of the gains from trade used by economists going back to David Ricardo. So what is all the fuss about the globalization of the textile and appare
4、l industries? The answer is that there is “old news” and “new news” in this story. The old news is that the movement of apparel and textile products between nations arises from the comparative factor costs and productivities for labor, capital and other inputs between nations and their impact on pro
5、duct costs, as modified by transportation, insurance, and related costs. Similarly old news is that the flow of goods is mediated by changes in international exchange rates, as evidenced most recently during the Asian fiscal crisis. Finally, quotas and tariffs continue to affect global trade of appa
6、rel and textile products now as they have for centuries, given the changing desire of countries to protect their nascent apparel and textile industries(often viewed as the foundation of industrialization policies)from “foreign competition.” So, is there anything “new” about the globalization of appa
7、rel and textiles? This question has particular policy salience given that the current system of bilateral agreements on quotas for apparel and textiles(the Multi-Fiber Arrangement)that has been in place for decades will come to an end in 2005 and that in the years following that, China will also bec
8、ame a full player in a “quota-free” world of trade under the World Trade Organization(WTO).Many commentators surveying and forecasting the future scene rely on the “old news” factors described above and forecast rapid shifts in the sourcing of global textile and apparel with most of those goods movi
9、ng to low wage nations in Asia, and especially China. This view is evinced by many U.S. textile and apparel manufacturers, government agencies, labor union officials,and the governments of nations that, as we shall see, have been recent beneficiaries of “globalization.” There is “new news” to be tol
10、d about globalization. That news challenges some of the notions about what will drive change in the flow of apparel and textile goods in the next decades. Although factor prices and comparative productivity, exchange rates, transportation costs, and tariffs will continue to affect patterns of sourci
11、ng, a new set of factors related to the distribution of products plays an increasingly important role. Before looking at actual patterns of trade in the United States, we sketch out the important changes that have occurred in the distribution of products in the U.S. market. We then, through a brief
12、presentation of a model of on-shore versus off-shore production, demonstrate why the calculus of sourcing decisions has changed. With this as grounding, we turn to the evidence on the national origins of apparel products sold in the U.S. market and describe major shifts in those sourcing patterns. W
13、e then analyze the role of “old” and “new” factors in explaining the shifts. Given the major changes in trade laws that will affect(some say transform)the global sourcing of apparel and textile trade, we assess the impact of projected changes in trade agreements in 2005 and beyond on patterns of app
14、arel and textile sourcing in light of our findings. We conclude by relating our work on apparel and textiles to the general themes of this volume. New factors in global sourcing: Lean retailing and the supplier problem Lean retailing and product proliferation Two changes profoundly affect the proble
15、ms faced by suppliers of consumer industries: the spread of a new form of retail distribution in the U.S., “lean retailing,” that now characterizes much of the retail sector； and increasing product proliferation of consumer goods. Lean retailing and product proliferation together change the basic pr
16、oduction problem facing suppliers and supply chains. As we will develop below, this in turn changes one of the key drivers of international sourcing of apparel products. In contrast to the infrequent, large bulk shipments between apparel manufacturers and retailers under the traditional retail model
17、, lean retailers require frequent shipments made on the basis of ongoing replenishment orders placed by the retailer. These orders are made based on real-time sales information at the stock keeping unit level(or SKU, the specification of the product at the most detailed level),that is collected at t
18、he retailers registers via bar code scanning, and aggregated centrally. Orders based on these data are sent to suppliers, often on a weekly basis for each store. With the advent of lean retailing, suppliers must replenish a higher percentage of their products within a selling season. Rather than spe
19、cifying that manufacturers respond to a single, fixed order placed far in advance of required delivery time, leading lean retailers require that a replenishment order be filled in as little as 3 days(Abernathy, Dunlop, Hammond, and Weil 1999；2000a).The diffusion of lean retailing across different ch
20、annels of retail distributionmass merchants, department stores, specialty storesmeans that apparel and textile suppliers now replenish a high percentage of their products within a selling season. Product proliferation compounds the problem posed by lean retailing because suppliers must provide a gro
21、wing number of products on a replenishment basis. Even the apparent sameness of products like mens dress shirts masks a much larger set of offerings. A Lands End pinpoint oxford dress shirt, made of 80s two-ply cotton, and available only in white or blue seems the most basic of apparel. Along with t
22、he usual choice of neck and sleeve length, the customer may choose from four collar types and three cuts(regular, trim, and tall).The total number of combinations available to consumers of this basic dress shirt adds up to 577.4 Yet this represents only one line of mens pinpoint dress shirts offered by the companyadd to it other weights and types of fabric, solid colors, stripes and plaids, and styles and the offerings quickly go into the tens of thousands. Product proliferation means that a quantity of demand that might have been
