US Gets Nervous over Chinese Recalls

The US and China are starting to get nasty about some poor quality products that the US has imported from the People’s Republic of China. The incidents of contaminated toothpaste, defective tires and poisoned pet food have been covered extensively in the American press. The impression is that Chinese products don’t meet American safety standards. The Chinese, naturally, take exception to the suggestion that their exports aren’t up to snuff. The argument, though, underlines the need for common standards in free-trade arrangement to prevent non-tariff barriers to trade from arising.

First of all, food exports are usually drawn from the exact same supply of food that is consumed domestically. In other words, Chinese food exports to the US are roughly of the same quality as the food the Chinese themselves consume. Reuters reported, “The health concerns have triggered a clean-up in China's food industry. Authorities shut down 180 domestic food manufacturers during the past six months for making substandard food or using inedible materials for food production, state media said this week. Chinese legislators identified food safety as one of their top concerns during an annual meeting in March, after a spate of incidents involving fake, dangerous or mishandled products killed or sickened dozens of Chinese.”

People can get sick from food produced in America as well. However, it is hard to believe that the US Department of Agriculture would have to close down 180 companies in the US for making a lousy product. In fairness, the PRC hasn’t had the kind of food inspection system the US has had for a century. Indeed, closing down so many is both a sign of a big problem as well as a sign of a determination to fix the problem.

As for tires, Moderntiredealer.com explained exactly what happened in the case of tires imported to the US by Foreign Tire Sales, Inc. of Union, New Jersey and made by Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. Ltd. “FTS filed a Defect and Non-Compliance Report with NHTSA on June 11. ‘For some period of time, these light truck radial tires were manufactured without a gum strip or with an insufficient gum strip between the belts or other construction to keep the belts from separating,’ said the letter. ‘When FTS first purchased these tires, they were manufactured with .6mm gum strips. At sometime, unknown to FTS, Hangzhou Zhongce manufactured tires without gum strips and then with .3mm strips. Such construction is susceptible to belt and/or tread separations’.” Hangzhou Zhongce denies the tires are unsafe.

However, if country A has one set of standards for a product and country B another, any trade between them will be disrupted when something is found lacking in such products. Bringing prescription drugs to the US from Canada is an example of this. If the drugs are identical, there should be no problem. The argument is over whether Canada’s different standards are really all that different or whether American pharmaceutical firms are hiding behind this non-tariff barrier to trade to protect their market. Free trade is great, but if standards vary, there is an inevitable race to the bottom or one country floods another with products that aren’t acceptable. Even the perception that standards vary allows companies to resist opening markets to foreigners.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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