I read a really good article by Phyllis Schaffly: about the so-called “free-trade” alliancewith communist China. She extols on how China forces the US companies inChina to divulge their trade secrets and then goes into direct competition with those verybenefactors, forcing them out of the markets. Well … DUH! Does this surprise anyonewith an IQ above a moron? Of course they are screwing US companies. Likethe legendary scorpion, it their nature. This situation in and of itself is badenough, but has anyone except myself had a bad experience with theplethora of Chinese trashflooding our stores? I mean this stuff is pure crap. Every store my wife and Ivisited during the Christmas shopping days stocked merchandise from China,Thailand, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mexico, and so on ad nauseum. We had to really searchto find a US manufactured object. Folks, in light of the massiveunemployment problems we currently face, this should be a stadium sized red flag. All ofthese countries practice protectionism on a grand scale. US companies are“allowed” to build their plants and hire local workers but they are heavilyrestricted in what they can sell in the marketplaces. All the cheap crap finds itsway here under trade agreements. China happens to be the worst by several ordersof magnitude.
I air condition my modest home using window units. I have six in my house. All weremanufactured in China by GE. In the first year, Ihad to replace five of them due to mechanical or electronic problems. I replace themwith Frigidaire units made in Atlanta I believe. At any rate they are madehere in the US. They are mechanical units with little if any electronics.They work flawlessly. I can’t remember how many space heaters I have purchased,all made in China. They have about an 80-90% failure rate within the first3 months. I bought a microwave oven to replace an old one made here. The new oneis from China. It lasted six months and the magnetron burned out. A toasteroven of the same manufacture lasted about eight months before dying a horrible death.
I could go on and on about the crap and trash I have purchased at the local Chinese departmentstores (Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart,et al). The thing is, it isn’t bad enough that the merchandise is so bad, butunless it breaks when you take it out of the box, the seller will not honorthe warranty. I have lost track of the times I have been told I will have to talkto the factory to resolve warranty issues. THE FACTORIES ARE IN CHINA YOUMORONS! I am not going to spend hours on international phone calls to get a toasterreplaced. And the manufacturers know it. In fact, they count on it. And itreally galls me to be told I will have to purchase a service policy in orderto get the warranty coverage I am entitled to for free. Why should I have to paythe store to enforce the warranty they are responsible
for? Why should they, an agent for themanufacturer, be allowed to squirm out of their responsibilities? They sellthe crap; they should have a responsibility to replace it when it breakswithin the warranty period. If my car breaks under warranty, I take it back tothe dealer where I bought it. They fix it. It is between them and themanufacturer to work out how to pay for it. If my new house has problems during the firstyear, it is covered by the builder’s warranty. I call the real estateagency that I bought it from and they see that the builder makes things right. Whyshould the purveyors of Chinese crap be any different?
It is far past time for us to let our representatives in the congress know that we are fed uppaying hard earned cash for cheap,poorly designed and manufactured crap. They can and they must stop the flood ofjunk (and I don’t mean boats) coming out of China.
China holds a massive chunk of our national debt. This doesn’t mean they can ruin our economyat will. Nor does it mean they canflood our markets with crap. My mortgage banker doesn’t tell me what brand of socks to wear, nor would I
allow him to. We must find some way to enforce a degreeof quality control on their products before they are allowed into our markets. If theycan’t (or won’t) improve the quality of their products and if they are unable tomanufacture products without using dangerous chemicals, then stop the flow ofthose products until they do … period. The same goes for the other countries aswell.
As for the manufacturer themselves, they made their beds. They should be prosecuted or atleast penalized for divulging tradesecrets and techniques.
The good news is that if we ever go to war with China we probably only need to keep it going fora week or so. By then all theirmilitary hardware will start to fall apart and fail. At least we can hope they usethe same degree of attention to detail they use on consumer products.
If the formatting of this article looks weird, it's because the text editor keeps re-formatting the text. Must be Chinese.
Comments