As Asia embarks on the earnings season, it will be met by the perfect storm — Asian profit margins have for a while suffered from the ill effects of the poor terms of trade. In the past, productivity improvements were able to mitigate these issues. No more. YTD, commodity costs have risen 23x faster than export prices. Since 2007, commodity costs have risen 58x faster than export prices. This, and sharply slowing volume growth, should lead to a litany of EPS misses.