Ressources

madeinnations.com n’est pas seulement une base de données. Ce site-ressource vous propose également de nombreuses informations sur la question de l’origine des produits que nous achetons.

Cette rubrique présente des liens vers des articles publiés en anglais sur ce sujet.

Vous trouverez également des liens vers des sites qui font de la provenance des produits une priorité dans la rubrique “Liens”.

As well as providing accurate information on where consumer goods come from, we also want to provide you with links to articles on the issues. That's one of the reasons why we're a country of origin resource, and not just a database.

Outsourcing
Most global IT brands use subcontractors to make their products, especially in China. The Wall Street Journal published a ground-breaking article a few years ago about a key Apple subcontractor, and it remains one of the best resources on the subject. There have been other reports of life inside subcontractor factories and assembly plants, such as these ones from the UK Mail on Sunday, from www.macworld.com and from www.pcpro.co.uk. Apple's response can be found at www.appleinsider.com and at the PC Pro site, which also follows up the story with a report on unions at the main facility. This article gives another insight into it. The iPhone supply chain has been looked into, by texyt.com and here, and the latest Greenpeace report questions the iPhone's environmental impact.The iPhone girl became popular in 2008 and you can see her at macrumours.com and here.

You can read about the subcontractors some other companies use in this UK Guardian article, and Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and HP are featured in this report from February 2009.

Why making things matters
Assembling products first can lead to innovation and new opportunities later, as this Business Week report shows. If you don't make enough things, and you try to import almost everything you can buy, your economy can end up with serious trade deficits. For just how bad a problem this can be, see www.iousathemovie.com, which has a 30 minute version of the acclaimed documentary.

Making things also needs a vast reserve of strategic metals and minerals, and if you have enough of them you can guarantee the future of your industries for years ahead. That's why some people talk about a sort of Copper Standard instead of a Gold Standard to back up currencies. This UK commentator explains how he thinks this will play out, and what the consequences might be for the US and the rest of the world.

Lithium
Lithium is set to be one of the most contested resources this century. Its use is widespread in consumer electronics but it's also essential to the first generation of practical electric cars. There have been some good articles in the UK press this year. The Daily Mail published this excellent piece in Apri, and the themes have been updated in this article from the Times which stresses the competition between Japan and China for access to Bolivia's deposits (50% of the world's future supplies).