Translate the article into Russian orally. Is U.S. manufacturing making a comeback — or is it just hype?
Is U.S. manufacturing making a comeback — or is it just hype?
It’s hardly news when a U.S. firm moves its manufacturing operations abroad to China. But what about when a Chinese company sets up a factory in the United States?
That actually happened in January, when Lenovo, a Beijing-based computer maker, opened a new manufacturing line in Whitsett, N.C., to handle assembly of PCs, tablets, workstations and servers.
The rationale? The company is expanding into the U.S. market and needs the flexibility to assemble units for speedy delivery across the country, says Jay Parker, Lenovo’s president for North America.
While it’s still cheaper to build things in China, those famously low Chinese wages have risen in recent years. U.S. firms that have long operated abroad are making similar moves: Caterpillar, GE and Ford are among those that have announced that they’re shifting some manufacturing operations back to the United States. And economists are now debating whether these stories are a blip — or whether they signal the beginning of a major renaissances for American manufacturing.
It’s easy to be skeptical. So far, the effect on jobs has been modest. Since January 2010, the United States has added 520,000 manufacturing jobs — and of those, just 50,000 have come from overseas firms moving here, according to the Reshoring Initiative. That’s a decent number, but it pales beside the 6 million factory jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says vanished between 2000 and 2009.
Yet the optimists counter that the logic of a manufacturing comeback remains compelling. Besides the shrinking wage gap between China and the United States, the productivity of the American worker keeps rising. Shipping costs are rising as well, making outsourcing more costly. And the surge in shale gas drilling gives the United States a wealth of cheap domestic energy to bolster industries such as petrochemicals.
All that could combine to make U.S. factories more competitive in the years ahead, not just with Europe and Japan, but with the manufacturing behemoth in China. This shift won’t mean the United States will have 19 million manufacturing workers again, the way it did in the 1980s. For one thing, automation is still a powerful force. And the types of jobs that come back will be very different from the ones that vanished. Still, any significant uptick in domestic manufacturing after a decades-long decline could bolster the economy and spur innovation.
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The Washington Post, May 1st, 2013
USEFUL TERMS AND EXPRESSIONS
· to handle assembly –осуществлятьсборку
· rationale – объяснение, обоснование, аргументация, мотивация, подоплека
· a blip –внезапное отклонение
· renaissance –возрождение
· decent– изрядный, приличный
· to pale – бледнеть, тускнеть, меркнуть
· compelling –веский, убедительный, аргументированный
· shipping costs –транспортные расходы
· foronething – для начала, прежде всего
· tospur – побудить, подстегнуть, дать толчок, породить
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Translate the article into Russian orally.
Mining Collapse Cripples Africa’s Dreams of Prosperity
KITWE, Zambia – A decadelong commodity boom brought sleek shopping malls, tidy brick homes and dozens of private schools to this mining town in the heart of Africa.
The population doubled and incomes soared as record copper prices and a flood of Chinese investment and workers transformed a region bordering war-ravaged Congo into a beacon for Africa’s rising middle class.
Now the global forces that propelled Kitwe’s rise have reversed, fomenting an economic and social crisis that has interrupted dreams of greater prosperity across Zambia’s copper belt and exposed the fragility of Africa’s commodity-fueled growth model.
Slowing Chinese demand has nearly halved the price of copper in two years, upending an economy reliant on the metal for 70% of its exports. Chinese contractors and restaurateurs that followed state construction companies into the landlocked country are starting to head home.
Glencore’s Mopani copper mine in Kitwe, Zambia, has shed thousands of jobs. Kitwe is a prime victim of the commodity bust’s outsize impact on Africa. Several mines have closed and some 15,000 workers have been laid off. Officials say each miner’s salary supports 15 dependents, exposing the entire town to the ravages of the global rout.
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Violent crime is rising and blackouts have become commonplace. Mining industry subsidies for HIV and malaria medications have been reduced. Double-digit inflation has frozen sales of the refrigerators, televisions and cars coveted here as hallmarks of success.
Kitwe’s trauma is reverberating across Zambia and other resource-reliant African economies from South Africa to the Sahara. After years of blistering expansion, Nigeria, Angola and South Africa—whose oil, gold and platinum industries have long driven the region’s growth—are mired in crises that are freezing development and testing increasingly cash-strapped governments.
The dramatic shift has revealed how reliant many African economies remain on commodity riches, prompting some investors to reassess an “Africa Rising” narrative that exaggerated gains in manufacturing, infrastructure and education.
The Wall Street Journal, March 4th, 2016
USEFUL TERMS AND EXPRESSIONS
· tocripple –разрушить,парализовать, ослабить, нанести ущерб
· abeacon –1) маяк, сигнальный огонь 2)путеводная звезда, светоч, эталон
· toreverse– кардинально измениться, повернуть вспять
· to foment –разжигать, провоцировать, нагнетать
· toexpose –выявлять, открывать, демонстрировать, подвергать (опасности)
· fragility –хрупкость, уязвимость, неустойчивость
· toupend –кардинально изменить, потрясти, сбить с ног
· to be reliant on –зависетьот
· contractor –подрядчик
· ravage –разорение, уничтожение
· hallmark –отличительная черта, признак, характерная особенность
· to reverberate –отражаться, отдаваться, воздействовать
· tomire –погрязнуть, оказаться в трудном положении
· cash-strapped –испытывающий финансовые затруднения, нехватку наличности
TEXTS FOR TRANSLATION IN WRITING
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