China: Threat or Opportunity?/How can U.S. finishers and platers fight the loss of their industry to offshore producers?

摘要

In 1911 Crown City Plating Co. was founded in El Monte, just outside Los Angeles. Over the years, Crown City became one of the largest metal finishers in the U.S., specializing in automated brass, chromium, copper, and nickel plating as well as plastics plating and organic finishing. The company employed thousands of people over the years and operated a 295,000 sq. ft. finishing plant. Last year, however, Crown City Plating closed. "Men who have spent their lives learning the chemistry and plating business, they've got no place to go now," says Lee Harper, an industry observer based in Southern California. "We've got to build a dam somewhere to stop this." Crown City is out of business because it could not compete in a metal finishing market now dominated by low-cost finishers in Asia, especially China. It is but one U.S. victim, according to The Policy Institute, the political-information arm of the National Association of Metal Finishers. The U.S. finishing industry has shrunk by 20 percent over the past three years, with almost all that business lost to offshore finisherand platers