More and more garment-making countries are subject to serious doubt about their political stability.
So who do you turn to for advice?
The simple answer is: not the experts.
Yesterday (November 9), we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was working for one of Germany's biggest businesses at the time: notn a single one of the political experts we had on retainer, or of the politicians we talked to daily, predicted it – even the day before. Nor did the CIA, the KGB or Britain's or France's "intelligence" agencies – who on this were less use than a subscription to The Sun, Robert Murdoch's near-pornographic daily newspaper in the UK.
Tomorrow, we commemorate the end of the First World War, at 11 am GMT on 11/11/1918. No-one predicted that either. No-one predicted a minor assassination of an Austrian Grand Duke in no-one had ever heard of in an even more obscure town in 1914. No-one predicted such a relatively trivial incident would provoke war between Britain, France and Russia on the one hand and Germany and Austria on the other. No-one predicted when war broke out in August 1914 it would last so long and wipe out an entire generation of French, German and British young men. No one predicted it would lead to the rise of Communism in Russia. No-one predicted America would join in: no-one predicted how quickly Germany collapsed once America did join.
Now if such matters of life and death proved beyond the sharpest political and diplomatic minds of the day, what are the chances today a few businesspeople can predict whether Honduras stabilises or whether the EU will extend its duties on Chinese shoes?
Lousy, of course. All anyone can say is that Honduras might remain a mess for a while, and that the EU might extend anti-Chinese duties. Betting on the eventual outcome, or its timing, is strictly for gamblers – and their chances of success are worse than if they pick the winner of tomorrow's horse races by sticking a pin into a copy of Murdoch's The Sun.
Businesses aren't in earth to predict: they're here to evaluate a range of options and work on the assumption several might happen.
Yesterday's and tomorrow's anniversaries offer a better business lesson than almost any MBA course
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