An inevitable increase in freight costs is not going to wipe out the benefits of manufacturing in low-cost countries abroad.
It has also begun to obtain some of its basic garments from low-cost countries, although the bulk of its production remains in Europe.
After decades roaming the world in search of lower costs, U.S. manufacturers are finding that factories at home can compete with China, India, Mexico and other low-cost countries.
But both GM and other car makers in Europe believe that the only way to fend off competition from low-cost countries, and thus retain car production in Western Europe, is to improve productivity.
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But with consumers so used to paying so little, retailers and apparel manufacturers are reluctant to raise prices and have become even more eager to find low-cost countries to produce their goods in, economists say.
Another study by Ben Broadbent, an economist at Goldman Sachs, suggests that consumers in the euro zone have also benefited much less from the outsourcing of production to low-cost countries than have consumers in America or Britain, who have enjoyed a sharp decline in the price of clothes in recent years.
But labor activists say the same problems are rampant in low-cost Asian countries, which produce most of the world's clothing.
This argument has some merit, mainly because price pressure clearly comes from the ability to ship steel from low-cost developing countries to more mature economies.
"They are being hammered by low-cost smartphones in countries such as China, " he said.
Developing countries demand low-cost products with adequate, durable technology, while developed countries expect frequent breakthroughs in technology at reasonable price points.
When prices are low, oil-rich countries welcome the low-cost, high-tech and well-capitalised oil firms.
And the presence of low-cost labor makes the countries attractive manufacturing locations for companies in Western Europe.
Second, the budget airlines may struggle to make similar profits to their lucrative low-cost counterparts in other countries because, despite deregulation, airport costs and fuel taxes in Japan remain among the highest in the world.
Most of the sales are skewed towards the smaller, low-cost vehicles in developing countries which is hardly surprising since a majority of them are purchased by first-time owners or customers with limited earnings relative to the car prices.
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The cost-cutting was considered vital to competing with the very low-cost Android smartphones that thrive in countries like China, as Nokia wasn't about to throw a mix of basic Symbian phones and Windows Phones against a pure smartphone platform like Google's.
Mr Summers wants the Fund to focus on short-term crisis management, and to avoid being a low-cost source of money for countries with ready access to private capital.
After a lunch with his pick for the Senate seat, Kirsten Gillibrand, Paterson told reporters that the United States should help make low-cost loans available to other countries, to get the global economy back on track.
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Other 2011 Grand Challenge Scholars from Duke University and Olin College pursued projects to restore urban infrastructure, improve technology for wind and solar energy, create educational software for middle school students, and develop low-cost cancer diagnostics for developing countries.
In addition to facilitating global low-cost money transfers to over 200 countries, the EU subsidiary is focusing on payout solutions for international corporates, multi-level marketing companies, and affiliate networks.
With those, they either supply foreign automakers in their home countries or make low-cost parts to ship stateside.
In practice, Brazil's low-cost food may be shut out by rich countries' trade barriers.
The use of low-cost, small-scale technologies in developing countries was promoted in the 1960s by Dr E.
But the simple, low-cost mobile-banking systems that operate in countries such as Kenya, India or Brazil suggest otherwise.
These range from planting mangroves to increase water catchments in high flood regions to providing low-cost risk transfer methods to farmers in developing countries.
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Favorable loans to these countries, combined with low-cost loans to Chinese companies, are making China a formidable force to be reckoned with in the global market for natural resources.
In theory, global trade should cause prices in different countries to converge: the prices of low-cost producers should gradually increase as wages rise (ie, China's falling prices were a temporary anomaly), while the prices of high-cost producers should fall.
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The ultimate goal is to empower blind consumers to create their own low-cost and potentially life-saving tools -- particularly in developing countries, which account for an estimated 90 percent of the world's blind population.
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Countries sometimes say they block Skype because its free or low-cost calls cut into the revenue of local phone companies.
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Reserve countries such as the United States are tempted to obtain low-cost loans and grow into debt, which causes instability in the world economy.
What began as an outsourcing of manufacturing to low cost countries has evolved as China and India have moved up the value-added manufacturing curve.
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