Cartoon by Brian Duffy Des Moines (Iowa) Register 8-21-07 .
Several weeks ago I saw the above cartoon in the Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal. It speaks volumes of the multitude of shoddy, second-rate, inferior, cheap goods coming out of the communist Peoples Republic of China. What do you expect where labor is sometimes literally slave labor?
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We, the United States, need to reassess our trade practices with this communist regime. We are actually fueling their military build-up. Allowing our multinational firms to make profits at the expense of slave or near-slave labor in China and at the expense of workers' jobs in America. I would like us to do all we can to balance the trade between our two nations and to become less dependent on China for our goods. We have given them enough.
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Personally, I have begun to look twice at product labels. I either avoid buying the product, doing without or I find an alternative to a product made in China. I purposefully do not purchase anything labeled with the hazardous warning label, Made in China!
More news is blasting the airwaves about another toy recall due to possible dangerous levels of lead paint. American Parents are running scared; start to the toy box dismayed by the lack of protection they had expected from companies with whom they had placed their trust.
ReplyDeleteAmerican corporations buy products for resale to the American public for as little as 35 cents, and then sell them for between $20 and $30 dollars on the shelves of toy stores across America.
China is able to produce these products and package these toys for an extremely low cost. We know there have been some shortcuts taken to achieve these prices. American consumers have assumed that those who imported these products undertook the testing and regulation required to meet our strict US market standards, we were wrong.
Business has changed in America; everyone is concerned with driving business profits without adding any value in the form of safety testing, and quality control to the product itself.
Unfortunately our government must step up and change its policy of allowing these business marketers to their own self regulation. The policy has failed dramatically with the risk this time directly affecting our children.
Our government has also failed the public who place their trust in the department of Consumer Product Safety. They have allowed this to occur, knowing the testing necessary was not taking place.
This represents just another crisis which is overtaking our Nation. America is being overwhelmed by one issue after another creeping up on their checkbooks and robbing them of more hard earned money.
China will move to establish regulation of products since they cannot afford to lose their standing in a developing economy.
So if that new improved and regulated toy costs China 60 cents or even a dollar, what will this toy cost by the time it reaches the American consumer?
We need a President who will look at all the issues regarding this situation, protecting not only our children from unsafe manufacturing in China, but protecting our free market system. Overpriced toys and loss of consumer confidence will place stresses on the very same corporations and ultimately cost the loss of yet more American jobs.
The time for change is now with Keith Sprankle, we need to rebuild our trust and confidence in our own government before we change the world.