Recordar Lawrence... nada está escrito (parte VIII)

Comecei esta série na parte I por causa de um feeling resultante da combinação do meu gosto pela via  "contrarian" com o que vou observando nas PMEs com que lido.
.
Acabo de encontrar um texto que corrobora... corrobora não, que justifica o meu sentimento, "France faces a Dilemma" de Kaj Grichnik e Jerome Pellan:
.
"The United States is not alone in its manufacturing malaise. In virtually every Western country, factory employment is disappearing and trade deficits are dangerously on the rise. Take France, for example. Between 1999 and 2009, the country moved from a positive trade balance of €17.8 billion (US$25.4 billion) to a deficit of €21.1 billion ($30.1 billion), a disturbing change in direction that took 30 percent of France’s manufacturing jobs with it.
.
And although these numbers mirror trends in the U.S., one very big distinction hidden in these statistics provides important clues about whether France and other western European countries are more likely to enjoy a manufacturing recovery, (Moi ici: Qual o país da Europa Ocidental que mais se aproxima dos Estados Unidos?) or whether the U.S. is — and that distinction clearly favors the United States. Unlike U.S. losses, the lion’s share of France’s losses in manufacturing capacity are not due to China and other low-cost nations; instead, French production and jobs are moving primarily to Germany. (Moi ici: É como se a França estivesse no meio-termo, perde no topo para a Alemanha e na base para a China. Nós por cá perdemos quase tudo para a China...)
.
In other words, the deterioration in France’s manufacturing capacity is the result of a shift within its region. Of the €38.9 billion ($55.5 billion) total decline in France’s trade balance, only about €7.2 billion ($10.3 billion) is directly attributable to the growth of its trade deficit with China. Yet between 1999 and 2009, France’s trade imbalance with Germany increased by a whopping €13 billion ($18.5 billion). By contrast, the United States’ trade imbalance with China grew more than threefold in that period while the U.S. trade deficit with Germany held steady.
.
The implications of this for France and for the United States could not be more different. If manufacturing does, in fact, become more and more regional, the United States stands to gain from the movement back to North America of Chinese and other low-cost production facilities. France, though, doesn’t have that luxury. (Moi ici: É o que tenho pensado e escrito no último mês...)
.
Moreover, France’s worsening trade deficit with China has been driven chiefly by manufacturing losses in lower-tech, lower-margin products, such as apparel, furniture, and office machines. France’s trade imbalance with western European nations has come at the expense of higher-value products such as automobiles, advanced chemicals, and industrial machinery. Consequently, for France, the regional manufacturing model could turn out to be a very expensive development.
.
France’s inability to compete effectively against other countries in its backyard for factory capacity is linked to a set of labor and cost dynamics that are increasingly antiquated in a more globalized and malleable manufacturing environment. (Moi ici: Flexibilidade, para mim, pode ser mais importante que os custos)  For example, France’s 35-hour workweek, imposed in 2000 just as other countries were liberalizing production shift rules, increases the overall cost of labor. Further, because of France’s generous medical, unemployment, and pension benefits for residents, companies pay an amount equal to about 83 percent of net salaries in so-called social charges, compared with only 47 percent in Germany. And industrial labor relations in France are extremely adversarial.

By addressing these and other equally problematic issues adroitly, France could possibly dissuade some CEOs from closing French factories. But if France doesn’t address these issues in the next 10 years, the country stands to lose an additional 7 percent of its manufacturing workforce, or about 200,000 jobs.

There are some indications that improving the fortunes of manufacturing is increasingly important to French politicians of all stripes. One of the more audacious proposals calls for taxing sectors that are not exposed to international competition to help industries that are. (Moi ici: A maneira rápida, fácil e errada de resolver um problema é subsidiando o seu prolongamento e atrasando a inevitável transformação... uma espécie de TSU?) But it will take more than new fiscal measures for France to regain its former manufacturing glory; a 21st-century cultural and social transformation is needed for France to again resemble the country that spawned such legendary industrial figures as Peugeot, Eiffel, Citroen, Hussenot, Renault, and Schlumberger.