We see this in the rare-earth sector, where the Chinese underbid competitors around the world.

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As workers compete for scarce jobs and firms underbid each other for sales, wages and prices will come under pressure.

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But please: Resist the urge to underbid just to get a contract.

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But I advised companies on both sides of the Littoral Combat System competition, and I saw how desperate they were to avoid being underbid.

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In global competition, Hitachi is regularly underbid by 30% by Chinese and Korean competitors, whose ability to compete on technology and delivery is also constantly improving.

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Crest has filed more papers wherever it can think of to file them and became an ongoing irritant to Sprint in its efforts to stuff Clearwire shareholders with a gross underbid for the value of its vast spectrum position.

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Their financial statements told them whether the entire business made money in the month, but on the months that they lost money, they were stumped: did they underbid their jobs, or spend too much money producing the work, or was their overhead too high?

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