Not Made in China: Do We Have a Choice?

What would your life be like if you boycotted all Chinese imports for a year? The Bongiorni family found out when Sara Bongiorni decided to convert Commerce Department trade statistics into their real meaning for an average family.

Her book about the experience, "A Year Without 'Made in China,'" is due out in July, and in it she details the family's struggles to find products that weren't made in China, or at least didn't have Chinese parts. It wasn't easy. Appliances that broke remained broken because the only repair parts came from China. Ms. Bongiorni had to order expensive Italian sneakers for her son because everything else was—you guessed it—made in China. "Bongiorni takes pains to say she does not have a protectionist agenda and, despite the occasional worry about the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas factories, she has nothing against China. Her goal was simply to make Americans aware of how deeply tied they are to the international trading system." In her career as a business journalist, she had often written about international trade, but never really thought about how it affected her family. She discovered what so many lower and middle-income families know, that if you want to live within your means, there's often no choice but to buy Chinese imports. I remember my sister's months-long hunt for American made clothes pins. No dice. Rather than buy Chinese clothes pins, she did without. Look at the labels in any dollar store or in Walmart, and you'll find that almost everything affordable says "Made in China." In 2006, the United States imported $1.7 trillion worth of goods, and 15% of that came from China. While Ms. Bongiorni was just trying to make a point, the fact is that the flood of imports from China means much more than the loss of workers' jobs. It means the loss of whole industries, a trend which has, over the last decade or so, resulted in the rapid decline of the United States as a producer of goods. While not all of that can be blamed on China, a lamp manufacturer told Ms. Bongiorni that China is "eating the lunch" of the few lamp producers left in this country. The recent news about contaminated pet foods and toothpaste, and the recall of defective tires, are messages that Americans need to pay attention to. Danger increasingly comes from everyday items, and we may not hear about it until people have died. The closing of 180 Chinese food plants for failure to meet health and safety standards is part of that message. In the survey conducted by The Pew Global Attitudes Project, one of the reasons given for increasingly negative attitudes toward China was its growing military and economic clout. When that clout affects the economies of nations, and the health and welfare of individuals, we should be concerned. http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2742510720070627