Here at GTL we’re big proponents of the idea that cheap Chinese goods, unregulated by labor or consumer safety laws and improperly priced by bad currency exchange rates, are hurting the American economy (if not our health). Sure saving that 10 cents for a pair of shoes might make you feel better in the short term but in the long term it might cost you your job. That’s not exaggerated hyperbole; that’s just the truth.
When Justin Gardner over at Donklephant wrote a piece about the about the new book “A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy” by Sara Bongiorni it’s safe to say my ears perked up. Ms. Bongiorni has written a piece at the Christian Science Monitor to give some idea of the premise of her book:
Last year, two days after Christmas, we kicked China out of the house. Not the country obviously, but bits of plastic, metal, and wood stamped with the words “Made in China.” We kept what we already had, but stopped bringing any more in.
The banishment was no fault of China’s. It had coated our lives with a cheerful veneer of toys, gadgets, and $10 children’s shoes. Sometimes I worried about jobs sent overseas or nasty reports about human rights abuses, but price trumped virtue at our house. We couldn’t resist what China was selling.
But on that dark Monday last year, a creeping unease washed over me as I sat on the sofa and surveyed the gloomy wreckage of the holiday. It wasn’t until then that I noticed an irrefutable fact: China was taking over the place.
It stared back at me from the empty screen of the television. I spied it in the pile of tennis shoes by the door. It glowed in the lights on the Christmas tree and watched me in the eyes of a doll splayed on the floor. I slipped off the couch and did a quick inventory, sorting gifts into two stacks: China and non-China. The count came to China, 25, the world, 14. Christmas, I realized, had become a holiday made by the Chinese. Suddenly I’d had enough. I wanted China out.
[...]
The funny thing about China’s ascent is that we, as a nation, could shut the whole thing down in a week. Jump-start a “Just Say No to Chinese Products Week,” and the empire will collapse amid the chaos of overloaded cargo ships in Long Beach harbor. I doubt we could pull it off. Americans may be famously patriotic, but look closely, and you’ll see who makes the flag magnets on their car bumpers. These days China delivers every major holiday, Fourth of July included.
I ordered the book today; look for a review within the month.
Crossposted at Blue Collar Heresy
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4:06 pm on June 29th, 2007 1
Good post, but I think we could have taken a second look at our passion for anything not American made a long time ago. If we had, we’d be in better shape.
The unshakable and unsupportable conviction that anything Japanese or German was better, has had people not only preferring to buy but willing to pay considerably more for anything with a foreign label even if it’s identical to the version with an American label. Witness Chrysler’s experience with cars coming out of their joint venture with Mitsubishi. China hasn’t got to the point where people just feel more hip buying their products, but it may be inevitable that they will while they complain about our decline.
The fashion driven urge to sneer at anything American and the profit driven urge not to employ Americans in manufacturing anything does vastly more harm to our country than any number of Mexican fruit pickers
7:07 pm on June 29th, 2007 2
We have to demand a rolling back of these trade agreements. The neoliberals kept saying the world was flat; well so are my pockets!
7:53 pm on July 3rd, 2007 3
It’s damned hard nowadays to buy stuff without buying Chinese goods. I’ve been trying off and on since the 90’s to do without
Chinese slave-labor stuff and sometimes it’s just not possible. Try to buy a fridge or a split-zone A/C that doesn’t have a compressor made in China. Try to buy any toys, or any Christmas lights (that’s “Winter Solstice Holiday Lights” to you liberals) that aren’t made in China. It gets harder and harder. I quit buying clothes at Sears because everything was from China or Malaysia. I wear Ruddock shirts, snap front, made in the USA and guess what, they last 3, 4 years while the Chinese crap is in the ragbag after 12 months. I buy Redwing shoes, made in America and easy for the shoe shop to re-sole. But for a lot of other stuff, hidden stuff like parts in the dishwasher or nowadays car parts, you’re gonna buy Chinese or not at all.
Your boy Billy-Jeff Clinton pretty much cut a lot of sweet deals for his Wall Street buddies and himself of course, and here we are stuck with the results. One of the things Dollar Bill Richardson ought to have to explain is how so many classified details of nuclear weapons design leaked out of Los Alamos when he was Secretary of Energy, too. If China ever puts a nuke onto L.A., it will surely be a copy of a US warhead! Thanks, Bill! But that’s another subject, sorry for getting off topic.
You know, I expected the Republicans to go along with that Wall Street, bottom-line-is-all-that-matters, screw the blue collars stuff. But now the Democratic Party is no damned better. NO DAMNED BETTER, got that?
I guess that thing that disgusts me most is not only have we sold our industrial capacity to an evil dictatorship, not only have we put millions of Americans who didn’t get college degrees (and aren’t illegal aliens, so they don’t count to the liberal Democrats in Congress) out of work, but the crap that the Chinese send back is really substandard, shoddy stuff. Those compressors in fridges, freezers and A/C’s crap out way too often. The toys have lead paint. Now the food supply is at risk because companies run by the Chinese government cheat like crazy – melamine in the food supply, anti-freeze in toothpaste – and don’t care about who they hurt, either.
I wish those folks living China-free good luck. The rest of us will need some too. Time for me to go out and dig up some more space for the garden.
11:07 pm on July 3rd, 2007 4
Well if you call anything you disagree with “liberal” and if you invent things for Liberals to dislike and then make fun of the things you invent, you might indeed be a redneck.
Like the Bullshit about Christmas, for instance. You can call it any damn thing you like and you can thank liberals for it.
And of course there’s the Clinton Bullshit – as if Both Bush’s haven’t been massively involved in outsourcing everything, dismantling our industries and eliminating our ability to examine what comes into the country. It’s the Republican deregulation idiots.
11:40 pm on July 3rd, 2007 5
I am a redneck, thanks for noticing. Who is it that’s telling everyone to say “happy holidays” instead of Merry Christmas, who insists that schools have “winter holiday break” instead of Christmas break? Who is it? I don’t have to thank Liberals for Chrismas, Fogg, I thank God. Maybe you should, too.
Sure Bush and his daddy have been up to their ears in outsourcing, that’s not news, but damn it, Billy Jeff Clinton was just as bad, maybe worse because he had the support of the AFLCIO as he did it. Hell, GW Bush just carried on what policies Billy Jeff got started. So get off your high horse and come down here where the working people are, the Democrats are NO DIFFERENT from the Republicans anymore. NO DIFFERENT. Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining, buddy.
10:09 am on July 4th, 2007 6
Actually I’ve never ever been told to say Happy Holidays instead of Christmas, but I have been told by one Fox Republican after another that “liberals” were saying it. There is not now and never has been a law in the United States requiring people to say or not say anything concerning Christmas although the Republicans have been trying to require religious statements for years, illegal as it is. Obviously you have a problem with freedom and the constitution that guarantees it.
Maybe you should hitchhike to the library and look the word Liberal up and maybe check out a history book or two.
Some businesses prefer to say Holiday, which Christmas is, and being that this is still a free country, it’s their right to cater to their customers in any way they like. Got a problem with freedom of speech or are you just a Republican Constitution hater?
Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus and if you had a degree in Church History you’d know that too. The only restrictions on celebrating it in this country were by the New England colonies before there was a United States of America.
Perhaps if we hadn’t reduced the power of Unions to nearly zero, we wouldn’t be up to our red necks in Toyotas and Hondas and illegal workers, but keep slinging it – it’s still a free country for the moment.
7:05 pm on July 5th, 2007 7
Funny how you don’t seem to have the balls to defend Billy Jeff Clinton’s record on shipping industry over to China, but would rather go on about Christmas. Maybe it’s cause you know you’d lose that argument, so you don’t wanna go there? Or maybe it’s cause you want Clinton II and are afraid to admit that Saint Hillary wouldn’t be any different when it comes to importing poison food and cheap Chinese machines than the Bushies are?
Now on Christmas: I know people who have been told any expression of Christian sentiment, especially around Christmas, will cost them their job. Like a lot of other intimidation, whether against union organizers or people pointing out safety problems, it’s done on the QT, and don’t bother suggesting they go to the ACLU ’cause that’s a waste of time. Public schools in NYC totally ban any Christian expression around Christmas, but approve of Jewish and Moslem displays, with the full approval of the ACLU/NYCLU. I don’t watch TV news, gave it up years ago, so I don’t know what Fox or CNN or anyone else says, but I do know what I see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, read and so forth.
You are the one who has a problem with free speech, I can tell. Probably like Sam Harris you want to take my children away and raise them in some government camp, too. Liberals like you are the reason it’s damned hard to make any progress in this country; if you don’t like Christians and Jews, that’s no skin off my ass, but that’s not enough for you, is it? Nah, you gotta go out of your way to piss people off just for fun.
Go drive your Volvo or whatever import you drive around for a while and at least buy some gasoline from an American company.
8:55 pm on July 5th, 2007 8
Probably this, probably that – people like me, yada yada.
You’re off in some fantasy world making up arguments you can win so you can have your dumb little cyber brawl and trying to pull everyone into your private hell like some spider.
For what it’s worth, I own a Chevy and a Chrysler and in case you haven’t noticed, Clinton hasn’t been president for a number of years, I’m an open supporter of Ron Paul and you’re the twirp that brought up Christmas and brags about being ignorant.
Go tip some cows or something
9:27 pm on July 5th, 2007 9
NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, PLEASE! Kids pull this blog up in their high schools around America, so we try to keep it nice around here. We welcome all comments but please attack the message but not the messenger and please keep the language suitable for high school aged young adults for me