I'm still missing something...
Chinese products are priced in Yuan. If the dollar buys more Yuan (the Yuan's value in dollars is less, hence cheaper) the price of a Chinese TV is less not more in dollars.
Now on the other hand if the Yuan is getting stronger, it takes more dollars to buy a Yuan and Chinese imports become more expensive. But these articles says the Yuan is getting weaker.
That's the basic econ theory. I bought into it just long enough to make it through the test, but it never smelled right.
If the yuan gets weaker against the dollar, Chinese exports to the US become "cheaper". In theory, and as long as we stop thinking too much right there. However, this means that the Chinese are getting less dollars for their products, which means they can turn around and trade those dollars in for less of our stuff. Magically, we get more of their stuff and we get less of their -- though they do get a bunch of little pictures of dead presidents and statesmen which fall in value every year, and have no real value until they are trade to someone for actual stuff.
But all that assumes that producers price their products based on the amount of XYZ currency they can get for them and not the amount of actual stuff they can get in return. I think that's backwards. Say a guy is willing to sweep a floor for an hour for enough money to buy a medium single topping pizza and a beer. If suddenly he can only afford a couple slices for the same labor, he's not going to be cool with that just because he's getting the same (or more or less) actual currency, what he cares about is how much stuff he gets in return for his labor. Companies are the same.
It seems to me what the basic econ theory ignores is what happens to prices in yuan when its value decreases.
