U.S. Family Tries Living Without China
June 29th, 2007I wrote a post about this several years ago, but Sara Bongiorni turned the exercise in to a book.
Via: Reuters:
Lamps, birthday candles, mouse traps and flip-flops. Such is the stuff that binds the modern American family to the global economy, author Sara Bongiorni discovers during a year of boycotting anything made in China.
In “A Year Without ‘Made in China,'” (Wiley, $24.95) Bongiorni tells how she and her family found that such formerly simple acts as finding new shoes, buying a birthday toy and fixing a drawer became ordeals without the Asian giant.
…
As a business journalist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bongiorni wrote about international trade for a decade. “I used to see the Commerce Department trade statistics, the billions of dollars, and think it had nothing to do with me,” she said.
The reality was far different.
As the year unfolded, “the boycott made me rethink the distance between China and me. In pushing China out of our lives, I got an eye-popping view of how far China had pushed in,” she wrote.
I too have been boycotting Chinese goods for several years. Shoes, computers and electronics are probably the hardest things to find non Chinese versions, but we manage. You can find products that are made in Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, but I would prefer US or Commonwealth products in almost all cases.
Plastics from China have high levels of solvent residue (it would be illegal if it were made in the US or EU). Chinese ceramics are painted with lead paint. It is so common that the chain stores have signs informing us that they contain lead but continue to sell them! The melamine in the pet food was just icing on the toxic cake.
Excellent find Kevin, thank you. More of these kinds.
That sounds swell, but it is pretty much impossible to completely avoid using Chinese products. Which you’d have to expect since, as the Wall Street Journal loves to boast, the U.S. has effectively merged with the PRC.
You know, they still have a huge poster of Mao, a man who murdered 100 million of his own people, hanging in Tianamen Square. And this is the country we are at the economic mercy of.
China is financing the United States, to the tune of a couple of billion USD a week. If you have fiat script in your possession, you’re already using Chinese goods.