Summary
PETER Mandelson's Italian brogues proved too slippery for the ice at the last Davos meeting. It was the beginning of an unhappy relationship between the EU trade commissioner and Italy's shoe industry, if threats this week of a 20 per cent rise in footwear prices on the British high street are anything to go by. Under pressure from Continental manufacturers, who claim they need protection against cheap imports, Mr Mandelson is threatening to slap heavy tariffs on the 950 million pairs of shoes made in China and sold in Europe each year. He has evidence that Far Eastern governments are subsidising their own footwear manufacturers and dumping dirt-cheap shoes on to European high streets. It is true that the remaining shoemaking industry in southern Europe - and what is left of the shoemaking industry in Britain - is under pressure from Asian competition.
However, tariffs that punish European consumers and retailers would bring their own problems. The Danish economics minister has said that the cost to European shoppers of more expensive shoes could be almost 10 times greater than the gain from protectionist tariffs for Europe's manufacturers. It is undeniably difficult for those manufacturers to cope with being undercut by Far Eastern imports. Since 1999, the number of workers in the British shoe industry has fallen from 14,700 to 6,400.See the full content of this document
Extract
Slipping Towards a Shoe War
European shoe manufacturers must adjust by focusing on very high- value products - the Manolo end of the market - or on design and marketing for products r...
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