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BRIC

BRIC refers to four countries that have shown rapid development and could become the four dominant economies of the world by 2050. The acronym is for the related economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. This thesis was proposed in 2003 by Jim O’Neill who is a global economist for Goldman Sachs. It is important to stress that Mr. O’Neill is not speculating that the BRIC countries will form some sort of economic union like the EU, but merely their combined economies will be the four largest by 2050. That’s not to say that they have not taken steps to boost their cooperation amongst each other in order to potential gain positions in international trading.

The countries of the BRIC are recognized as the fastest growing emerging markets (Mexico and South Korea are also potential candidates but are left off the list because they were considered too developed). Together Brazil, Russia, India, and China cover 25% of the worlds land and hold 40% of the world’s population.
Some future predictions have show that an alliance between Russia and Brazil to supply China and India could be a possible trade scenario due to large populations on the consumer side and large quantities of natural resources on the supplier side.

Whatever the future brings, international trade will continue to grow and the roles of the major players today could be very different by 2050.

US Manufacturing Continues to Grow

On Thursday the ISM (Institute for Supply Management) announced that the US manufacturing sector has grown for the eighth straight month. The current ISM manufacturing index is a six year high at 59.6%. The manufacturing index number indicates that with higher numbers more firms are growing. The good news for US manufacturing seems to be across the board with nearly 17 of 18 firms growing on average and only the plastic industry shrinking.

According to the Wall Street Journal “factories are reviving the economy”. This is true abroad as well as within the US with China’s manufacturing sector growing for the 13th straight month. Also many Euro-zone countries are experiencing growth with the exception of debt riddled Greece.

Despite the growth of firms in US manufacturing, employers are still reluctant to hire. They are pointing out that although the sector’s growth continues, the overall growth has begun to slow down.