U.S. trade officials will announce a major trade enforcement action against China on Tuesday, according to an advisory from the U.S. Trade Representative's office.

The advisory, which was obtained from a business group, said U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk "will hold a press conference to announce a major trade enforcement action against China." It gave no other details.

One possible action could target China's export restrictions on rare earths, which are crucial for global electronics production and the defense and renewable energy industries.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has lost its appeal of most of a $187.6 million verdict for Pennsylvania hourly workers who accused the world's largest retailer of denying them meal and rest breaks.

A three-judge panel of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on Friday said there was sufficient evidence for Philadelphia jurors in 2006 to conclude that Wal-Mart's practices violated state wage and hour laws. It also said Wal-Mart's own internal review uncovered violations regarding "off-the-clock" work.

The case was brought on behalf of about 187,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania from 1998 to 2006.

They contended that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company's engaged in improper practices to enhance productivity, boost profit and cut costs.

"The record reflects testimony and documentary evidence suggesting that because of pressure from the home office to reduce labor costs and the availability of significant bonuses for managers based on store profitability, Wal-Mart's scheduling program created chronic understaffing, leading to widespread rest-break violations," the appeals court said.

It nonetheless ordered the trial court to recalculate a $45.6 million award of legal fees, saying that court erred by "double-counting" some factors.

"We're committed to paying our associates for every hour they work and to providing them with meal and rest breaks," Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said. "That's our policy and we take it very seriously. In this case, we believe that the trial court's decision was wrong in a number of respects and we look forward to additional review in the courts."

The case was brought by Michelle Braun and Dolores Hummel, who had respectively worked in Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in eastern Pennsylvania, and drew on evidence from roughly 46 million shifts, court records show.

Judith Spanier, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, said in a statement that Wal-Mart wanted to "walk away" from its own business records, saying they were so inaccurate that they could not be used as proof.

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Video game consoles are illegal in China. Ironically, the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are Chinese made. And there is a flourishing PC gaming culture. There has to be a reason for this ban. Turns out, there is.

"Consoles have been banned in China since the year 2000," Lisa Hanson from market researcher Niko Partners tells Kotaku. "The government thought that was the best way to protect Chinese youth from wasting their minds on video games, after a parental outcry." The following year, online gaming exploded, and the market size hit $100 million. So the ban, Hanson says, "didn't stop the 'problem'."

A recent article on Chinese news site Sina.com points out, "In June 2000, the Ministry of Culture issued a notice, forbidding any company or individual to produce and sell electronic game equipment and accessories to China."

Plug'n'play consoles became a legal alternative to the banned home consoles. Nintendo released the iQue Player, a console it developed with software developer Wei Yen, whose California-based company AiLive co-created the Wii MotionPlus. The iQue Player was priced at US$60, and it is not a pure plug'n'play per se. Players can play Nintendo 64 games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Super Smash Bros. that were specifically ported to the system. To get new games, players go to their local game retailer, where they can download more titles onto a 64MB flash memory card. The cartridge is slotted directly into the controller, which houses the console.

"We have targeted people in developed countries such as Japan, the US and Europe with sophisticated machines," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said back in 2003. "To reach a wide range of people in China, especially those inland who are not as rich as those in coastal areas, we thought we needed to deliver a cheaper console." And to legally sell a video game console in China, it had to sell something that not only didn't quite look like a video game console and couldn't be pirated to Timbuktu and back. (That's not to say the iQue Player is piracy free!) Since then, Nintendo has used the "iQue" brand in China for its characters and products.
Software piracy is a huge problem in China, and that might be why game companies are hesitant to enter the Chinese market, but it's not why video game have been outlawed. Nintendo legally released its portable Nintendo DSi in Chinese stores in December 2009. Nintendo has yet to release its Nintendo Wii in mainland China.

Likewise, neither Sony nor Microsoft have released their consoles in the mainland. Sony and Microsoft, however, do have Hong Kong branches and have released their home consoles in that territory. Heck, there are even PS3 demo units at the Hong Kong airport. Sony might still be smarting to what happened to the PS2.

The console ban does exist on paper, but it is not strictly enforced. Piracy, on the other hand, is doing more to keep game consoles out of China than any government edict ever could. Sony released the PlayStation 2 in China in January 2004. The launch was a disaster with rampant game piracy and of the hardware itself. While it wasn't exactly the financial success Sony might have been hoping for, it did built a brand name for the company. Nintendo's Wii has been copied by a Chinese company and released as the "Vii", a game system that runs preloaded motion controlled games. Sony's PS3 has been knocked off as "The Winner". Pirated versions of console and PC games are prevalent. There are also cafes that offer players the chance to play video game consoles.

Game consoles do make their way into China through the gray market, where they are bought and sold illegally. Hanson at Niko Partners points out that gamers get their gray market consoles modded so they can play pirated games for either free or on the cheap. "The PS3 is hard to play pirated games on," says Hanson,"so it has the lowest share of the three brands."

What this means unless walmart starts to import from elsewhere all there products imported from china will go up in price...

http://blogs.forbes.com/china/2010/06/21/china-currency-2-0-yes-change-really-is-coming/