{"id":5473,"date":"2026-09-28T02:27:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=5473"},"modified":"2026-09-28T02:27:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:27:27","slug":"from-1000-gucci-sneakers-to-german-cars-china-is-coming-for-the-industries-that-made-europe-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=5473","title":{"rendered":"From $1,000 Gucci sneakers to German cars, China is coming for the industries that made Europe rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Gucci built its luxury reputation on Italian craftsmanship, but its newest $1,000 sneakers break with its 105-year-old tradition with a new label: Made in China. But instead of citing the cheap labor long associated with Chinese factories, the fashion house said it picked a Chinese manufacturer known for its \u201ctechnological know-how\u201d and ability to meet the brand\u2019s quality standards.<\/p>\n

\n

Gucci told Reuters<\/em> it will keep making its other products in Italy. But unlike the connotation a \u201cMade in China\u201d sticker carried from days of yore, the move to China is the latest signal of Chinese manufacturing moving into Europe\u2019s most storied industries, like high-end consumer goods and cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think symbolically, China has arrived,\u201d Ker Gibbs, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s no longer a place where only cheap stuff gets manufactured and poor quality this and that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shift is part of what some economists, like Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok, have dubbed the second China Shock. Cheap clothes, furniture, and electronics made in China poured into Western markets in the first wave in the early 2000s. Now, China is exporting electric vehicles and industrial machinery that compete with Europe\u2019s established manufacturers, while its factories have gained the technical expertise to produce high-end goods for luxury brands like Gucci, whose sales have halved in the last three years and whose parent company Kering cut prices to deal with slow demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Howard Yu, a professor of management at Switzerland\u2019s International Institute for Management Development, told Fortune<\/em> China is following the path of South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan in moving from t-shirts and dupes of name brand items to home appliances and higher-end cars and products \u201cat an unprecedented scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yu said much of China\u2019s know-how came from Europe. Volkswagen, for example, built cars in China since the 1980s, and \u201cessentially has trained up a generation of suppliers to meet Western standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment Chinese suppliers have enough capabilities, then you want to branch out to develop your own brands for better margins,\u201d Yu said.<\/p>\n

That has left European companies in an awkward position as Chinese manufacturers move away from being suppliers to being competitors. But it still remains cheaper to make things in China than in Europe and East Asia. Chinese manufacturing workers earned $629 per month on average last year compared to $1,341 in Taiwan and $2,075 in South Korea, according to a survey by Japan\u2019s trade agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s industrial giants are losing ground\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

No European country has felt this shift more than Germany, the continent\u2019s biggest economy and the fourth largest in the world. Since 2019, the mix of goods China exports to other countries has started to resemble Germany\u2019s: mostly factory machinery and cars. This overlap grew more for Germany than any other EU country, according to an analysis published by European Central Bank economists earlier this week.<\/p>\n

At the same time, China is also buying less from Germany. Last year, German exports to China fell 9.7% and imports from China rose 8.8%, according to Germany\u2019s statistics office, with Germany\u2019s trade deficit with China growing by a third. German car exports to China alone fell by a third last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cChina has already eaten much of [the] German industry\u2019s lunch and is preparing to start on dinner,\u201d economists Brad Setser and Sander Tordoir wrote in May.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Volkswagen is a case study in how China\u2019s manufacturing capacity has challenged Germany. China once supplied half or more of Volkswagen\u2019s profits, but now the carmaker\u2019s deliveries in China fell 36.6% in the second quarter. Peers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche posted similar losses. Volkswagen also announced it would cut its model lineup by up to half and cut 100,000 jobs\u2014the biggest restructuring in the company\u2019s 90-year history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chinese-owned carmakers are also gaining in Europe, where they outsold Japanese brands for the first time in May, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers\u2019 Association. The EU has tried to protect its automakers with 10% standard car tariffs and then slapped on additional tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese-made electric vehicle batteries.<\/p>\n

Yu said the shift to electric cars also erased Germany\u2019s biggest advantage: the prestige it earned on the internal combustion engine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow electric vehicles have changed the performance dimension towards battery and software, where China is extremely strong,\u201d Yu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An edge only at the top<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Yu lives in Switzerland, so when he thinks about what will come next for Europe\u2019s carmakers, he thinks about watches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, cheap and accurate quartz watches from Japan nearly wiped out the Swiss watch industry. Yu said the brands that survived, such as Omega, retreated to the top of the market and sold mechanical watches as luxury objects. But the industry had to shrink to make it. The number of Swiss watch employees fell from about 90,000 in its 1960s peak to 30,000 employees working in watch businesses by the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n

He said the same split could be what\u2019s ahead for Europe as China competes in the areas that were once its home turf. Europe\u2019s moat \u201cis now only sitting at the very top end, whereas the middle market has been all but chipped away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That leaves mass-market carmakers like Volkswagen with no easy way out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are in the mass market, such as Volkswagen, selling 9 million cars a year, you cannot retreat to the top end alone,\u201d he said. \u201cThe whole enterprise cannot survive on such a small volume, like Ferrari.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, European companies are turning to the Chinese manufacturers that once learned from them. Gucci\u2019s Drip sneakers fit that pattern by pairing an Italian brand with Chinese know-how. Volkswagen has started, too. In 2023, it paid $706 million for a nearly 5% stake in Chinese electric carmaker Xpeng and agreed to develop cars with it for China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#Gucci #sneakers #German #cars #China #coming #industries #Europe #rich<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gucci built its luxury reputat… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3766,173,2403,1939,5852,4054,8554,2251,39,8555],"class_list":["post-5473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-cars","tag-china","tag-coming","tag-europe","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-gucci","tag-industries","tag-rich","tag-sneakers"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom $1,000 Gucci sneakers to German cars, China is coming for the industries that made Europe rich - Finance News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=5473\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From $1,000 Gucci sneakers to German cars, China is coming for the industries that made Europe rich - 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