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© Cory M. Grenier

China has been dominating in many industries for the past decade. The success has been due to the low cost of manufacturing goods in China. Currently, this has provided the Chinese industry a new opportunity to do something that will help out the fashion industry. Being known for manufacturing clothing in China, they have now taken the lead in developing and selling fashion.

Many Chinese fashion trends today, especially those that are popular with young people, are inspired by Korean fashion that is featured on popular television series. The popularity of these TV dramas has grown so much in China that they are influencing a while generation of young Chinese in both their lifestyle and consumption choices. It's no surprise, then, that clothes from Korea are selling very well in China today.

S&S Fashion Plaza is a department store in Shanghai that is better known as "Korea Museum." It is one of the major fashion malls that caters to Korea enthusiasts by selling mainly Korean produced and designed clothes. Malls such as this now operate in virtually every big city in China. S&S Fashion Plaza features more than 100 shops, with about 60% selling exclusively Korean fashion, making it one of the biggest Korean department stores in East China.

© lydiashiningbrightly

Ever wonder about the end-life of all of the products that are manufactured for the American market? Well, more and more products are recycled. Take, for instance, Empire Today. This company, with its Empire Carpet line, participates with a program called Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) and Carpet Landfill Elimination And Recycling (CLEAR). Working with these programs, Empire Today processes 100% of all the recyclable carpet and padding that its installers remove from their residential, small business, and commercial customer floors. From the perspective of being environmentally responsible, this is a great leap from how businesses used to operate. Such efforts set an excellent example of how much is in fact doable in terms of treating our environment with greater care for the sake of future generations. It's great to see that our need for manufactured goods in order to meet our demands for consumption is now taken more closely full circle to assuring a responsible end for those manufactured goods. Recycling is in itself also an extremely viable business sector in the U.S., and is continuing to increase as such. This is an important evolution to our economic cycle, which not only addresses vital environmental issues, but also creates more jobs, which ultimately contributes to sustaining our economic viability.

© USDAgov

A Taiwan trade promotion mission to Hungary has generated an estimated $16 million in potential business with that country, according to the Taiwan External Trade Development Council.

The mission was comprised of representatives from 56 Taiwanese manufacturers of information communications products, hand tools, hardware, machinery, textiles and electronic parts and components. 640 one-on-one sessions were held with over 200 Hungarian buyers during a trade event on April 5 in Budapest. This stop was the first leg of the mission's current tour through Central and Eastern Europe that will also take it to Russia, Belarus and Turkey. Total trade volume between Taiwan and Hungary totaled $530 million in 2010, with Taiwan enjoying a $375 million trade surplus with that country. Taiwan's exports to Hungary also rose 9.5% from the previous year, while Hungary's exports to Taiwan doubled.