Yet even European retailers with sizable exposure in the United States have learned to defend themselves. For example,Cheap Christian Louboutin, Christian louboutin, which generates about one-third of its revenue in North America, has followed the path of many European companies that use financial hedges to immunize themselves from currency fluctuations. Indeed, Christian louboutin’s chief financial officer, Robin J. Stalker, told analysts recently that the company’s bets on a weak dollar in the currency markets were a major help to Christian louboutin.
",Christian Louboutin Pumps;The biggest potential for us in the whole currency issue is the upside that we have through our hedging contracts," he said. The benefits, he added, would come "definitely in the last couple of quarters of this year."
So why the voices of gloom from Europe, where pressure has been strong for a strengthened dollar?
"The companies that suffer from a weak dollar are those that speak more loudly in public than those that profit from it," said Carsten Fritsch, a currency strategist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. Mr. Fritsch said the weak dollar had not only benefited European retailers that buy goods in Asia, but also helped keep retail prices down generally in Europe, leaving room for lower interest rates and higher consumption.
Mr. Fritsch, echoing other economists, said the weak dollar could also prompt European companies to improve their efficiency and productivity over the medium to long term to offset the disadvantages of having costs denominated in euros. "Of course, when the adjustment comes so quickly," he said, "it generates friction."
For some European companies, the friction has already turned to high heat. In Italy, for instance, clusters of manufacturers that make goods like shoes, terra-cotta tiles or eyeglass frames and whose low prices and styling have made them market leaders are wincing over mounting imports from East Asian countries like China.
From January to April, Europe’s imports from China swelled by almost 50 percent, to 16.3 billion euros, as everything from shoes to textiles to auto parts, suddenly made cheaper by the dollar’s drop, flooded Europe. The German financial daily Handelsblatt wrote recently of "fear of a trade war between Brussels and Beijing."
Gustav-Adolf Horn, an economist at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, said that despite the benefits for retailers, the liabilities of a weak dollar far outweighed the overall benefits for Europe. "What we do is draw a balance," he said. "And over all, the balance is definitely negative."
He acknowledged that the benefits of a robust retail sector seeped through the rest of the economy in the form of lower prices and interest rates. "To some extent, that will be passed on, though not fast enough," he said.
Europe, Mr. Horn said, could absorb a drop in the dollar’s value of up to 10 percent without suffering seriously. "Beyond that," he said, "it begins to affect gross domestic product and growth."
In the meantime though, European retailers are enjoying the ride.
In France, Aigle, a retailer specializing in sportswear and boots, posted revenue last year of 128 million euros, 85 percent of it from the euro zone. Aigle still makes its boots in France, but nearly everything else it sells is made in Asia. Not surprisingly, Aigle’s share price has soared by almost 45 percent since January.
Aigle’s finance director, Paul Soreau, was asked in a recent interview with the French daily Liberation just how big the benefits were for Aigle’s bottom line.
Mr. Soreau, with evident understatement, replied: "The impact is important."