Saturday, October 27, 2007
Be careful what you wish for Palm Bay, Florida. The residents of this blue-collar town on the Atlantic coast will soon vote on a initiative proposed by their mayor to prohibit the city from buying any Chinese-made products. Which, unfortunately, means everything. What a shame with the holiday season just weeks away. That Mac laptop you wanted for Christmas, made in China. Pretty much any article of clothing you wear in this town, made in China. And for all you Palm Bay kids, Santa won’t be bringing you any toys this year. Well, at least not any of the 90% of the American toys made in China. And that probably means all the cool ones. Apparently, residents of Palm Bay are fed up with the substandard quality of Chinese imports and all the American jobs lost to the Chinese. On the city’s website, which I have been browsing for about 20 minutes, the slogan at the top of the page reads, “Buy American.” Palm Bay would be the first American town to enact a blanket ban on items imported from a particular country. You’re probably wondering why I’ve been on the Palm Bay website for so long. Well, to be honest, I spent about a minute reading about Palm Bay and the other 19 perusing the town’s sex offender notification page. I guarantee the camera that took all of their mugshots was made in China. And if you’re bored, try to find the lone female of this handsome bunch. What the residents of Palm Bay don’t understand is that blue-collar towns such as Palm Bay, the towns that patronize places like Walmart and Target, are the places that benefit most from Chinese imports. And as an ABC News story Wednesday points out, the town’s 107,000 residents aren’t really going to stop buying Chinese goods. Like any good Americans, they just want to make a political statement without really sacrificing anything. There are more exceptions in the proposed ban than there are lead particles in little Tyler’s rattle. First, the ban only covers items priced over fifty dollars. Second, the ban doesn’t restrict individual shoppers, only goods purchased by the city. Third, the ban only applies to items in which 50% of the parts are Chinese-made. Fourth, if the item can’t be found anywhere else, the city will be allowed to purchase it from China. And last, and most absurd, if an American-made item costs 150% more than an identical Chinese-made version, the city is permitted to buy the import. How ridiculous is that last one? That’s exactly the point — Chinese stuff is cheap. As ABC cited from a Morgan Stanley report, Chinese imports have saved American consumers $600 billion in the last 10 years. There’s a reason why laptops are so cheap. And if these Floridians don’t support America’s trade relationship with China, a silly ban that will give their town some cheap publicity isn’t the answer. If Palm Bay feels so strongly, that we all should buy American, then they should actually do something, forgo something, stop going to Walmart, stop buying Apple products. While the health risks of Chinese products might be scary for people in this town, there are things in Palm that are much more frightening. Like sex offender James Jay Davis on Seahorse Circle. Third row, fourth column.
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