Why Doesn’t US Take a Harder Stand on Sub-Standard Chinese Exports?

September 15th, 2009. By Hunter West

Anyone who wonders why the US doesn’t clamp down harder on China and some of the sorry, dangerous, unsafe crap they export into this country need only remember that the People’s Republic of China owns 24.07 percent of all the US Treasury Securities held by foreigners (as of January, 2009 source: The US Treasury). 

That’s $739.6 billion dollars. And thus, one might speculate, 739.6 billion reasons why Americans have had to put up with substandard tires, lead in painted toys, counterfeit substances in heparin, anti-freeze in toothpaste, and God-knows-what in toxic Chinese drywall.

It’s criminal, what some families are going through. Especially in this economy, which is still in the doldrums with far too many people out of work, it’s that much harder to realize the great American Dream of home ownership. And once you separate the wheat from the chaff and ferret out those who accepted choking mortgages for palaces and estates their income levels suggest they have no business of owning, you find hard-working families who save their money, buy a sensible house and mortgage only what they can afford. 

They’ve done everything right—only to find that defective drywall imported from China is making their kids sick, turning their refrigeration coils black and ultimately holding them hostage to unknown toxins. Some have had to leave their homes entirely. Others have simply put up with it until somebody figures out what to do. 

That’s a tall order. Major contractors are busy litigating against their suppliers and sub-contractors for losses incurred in mitigating and remediating the damage, not to mention the assault to their reputations. 

Smaller contractors say they don’t have the money to go back in and rip out all the bad drywall—and that’s even if they can stop there. There are those who worry that whatever it is in the Chinese drywall making it toxic, is leaching into wood studs and sub-floors that in turn absorb the bad stuff and will continue to out-gas the toxin long after the offending drywall has been ripped out and replaced. 

Some have speculated that the only way to fix the problem is to tear the entire house down, frame and all, right to the slab. 

And even that might be premature. At least one expert on the structural environmental envelope has been saying in recent months that it’s premature to start talk about remediation without carefully understanding and analyzing just what it is in that sheetrock that makes the Chinese drywall toxic. Only then can proper procedures and protocols be established to deal with the problem. 

And so there are meetings. Lots of meetings, and think tanks with contractors, and insurance companies, and lenders all trying to figure out what to do.

Meanwhile, the homeowner waits. If he’s out of his home, he’s incurring relocation costs. If he’s in his home, he his sick. So are his kids, and all through no fault of their own. 

All they did was buy a house with a bad lot of drywall from China that the US government allowed entry into the country. What is the government doing to compensate the homeowners? The lenders? The insurers? 

If Uncle Sam isn’t willing to bring the hammer down on China, a Republic that holds the highest value of Treasury Bills of all international countries holding US debt, the government should at least rescue the families victimized by yet another sub-standard product from China. 

They rescued Wall Street after all.

Hey, Uncle Sam: If you’re not prepared to screen exports from a country with an increasingly negative reputation for poor quality products, then at least undertake some support for the unwitting buyers who had no hand in the alleged greed and lax workmanship that lay at the foundation of Chinese exports. 

Enough already. Take a stand, Uncle Sam. For Americans.  

Tags: chinese drywall, Chinese imports

This was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Defective Products . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.