Whta are the legal ramifications of this? Who do you sue, if a Chinese-made product causes death or serious injury? That tire importer in NJ (that brought in the defective tires) has no assets-yopu could sue them, but recover nothing. I suspect the courts will be useless in resolving these issues, so n.b.-don’t get into trouble in the firts place-don’t buy the products!
This plan has some potential backfirings. With international trade occurring so often, although often a product’s final assembly point is China, more often than not, many of the base parts used to manufacture the product comes from other countries, hence your “boycott” of China will hurt many countries - the U.S. included.
The cheap toys you guys have talked about - the plastic, paint, dyes, advertising company that sells the toys, etc. etc. often are based outside of China. A Macbook, as pointed out above, is assembled in China, but designed in the U.S. So should people stop buying Macbooks just because it’s final assembly place was China?
Also, if you want to boycott China because of its lack of environmental laws, human rights issues, whatever, then you might as well boycott every product made everywhere - the U.S. included. Your Ford Taurus that you so proundly buy because it was made in the U.S.? Its engine probably was assembled in China, the carpets lining the interior of the car were probably manufactured in Bangeldesh, the final assembly probably happened in Mexico, and the gas you buy to fill it up is probably from Nigeria.
No, you are still pretty much the only one claiming that the rest of us in here are weighing the price.
Time does not equal money in every single aspect. It’s my choice if paying a bit extra to buy American is worth it to me, but going an hour or more out of my way to find a product which may or may not be available at all is not worth it to me.
See what I mean? You’re so cute I just want to pick you up and take you home with me. 
Seriously, though, I know what you mean. I myself to this day refuse to visit Burma right next door. But after a while and if you look closely enough at everything, you’re going to end up boycotting everything. And to avoid products from a place like China, well, they’re just about in everything. Some component of virtually anything complicated you buy is probably going to have come from China.
Actually, my boycott of repressive Burma may not make that much sense either, since I go to Cambodia – no more Khmer Rouge in power, but Hun Sen is not a nice guy – and Laos, which is very repressive by many accounts. I’ve been to China more than once, and they killed off millions during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and who knows what they’re getting up to these days? Hmmm. Maybe it’s time I paid Burma a visit. Always wanted to see Pagan.
I am trying to avaoid Chinese-made screws and nails-but it is almost impossible to buy American made ones 9ant any price). the chinese made screws are terrible-I’d say that one in twn have such maldormed heads, that they can’t be drive. in addition, the slots are poorly made-you can strip the solots very easily. the nails are just as bad-they bend and break; i would up throwing half a box away once.
The “WALMART” philosophy (make it cheaper0 has gone too far-some of these products are so cheaply made, they are unuseable!
What are you talking about? The OP asked if anyone else was avoiding products from China and, if so, how they were going about doing that. That conversation was added to by Wee Bairn, who posited that if we demanded products made in the U.S., we would be paying exorbitant prices. I gave some examples of products that were made in the U.S. that were reasonably priced, then I went on to speculate that if we (as a nation) weren’t buying so much damn crap in the first place, we might not worry so much about high prices for things.
It is most certainly your choice if you want to buy things at very low prices and take the risks that those purchases entail. I never said otherwise. I make that choice myself for certain things (for instance, my son has approximately 18 billion Matchbox cars). I was simply stating that it is not IMPOSSIBLE to make another choice. If you don’t want to buy a cell phone that has parts made in China, you could either look around for one that doesn’t have parts made in China (probably impossible or very expensive) or just not buy a cell phone. Don’t say you don’t have a choice, though. That’s just silly.
And, Siam Sam, I agree with you that you can’t boycott everything that may matter [see above, in regard to me feeding my son’s small metal car addiction]. But just because it’s difficult to decide where to draw a line, doesn’t mean a line can’t be drawn. That decision is obviously up to every individual (or family), but people can and do make mindful purchasing decisions that aren’t based simply on what’s easiest and cheapest. Instead of making fun of those people, I admire them for their restraint and thoughtfulness.
There you go again with the price. Why mention this when no one here has said “well, I tried to buy an American-made lamp, but it was $25, so I had to settle for a $10 import!”
It’s silly to say that I said that I don’t have a choice. I’m not knowledgable enough to know in any particular market if there are Americanmade products available, but others in this thread have made that claim about particular products.
Let’s say I want some aforementioned screws, and that it really is the case that there are no American manufacturers.
I mean, well, I’m sure there are some, somewhere. If there was only one left, in a dinky recreationalists blacksmith cabin in New Hampshire, and he didn’t sell stuff over the Internet, would you claim that I do have a choice in the screws that I buy? I could theoretically drive there and get them, after all, I’d be supporting American business.
At what point would you admit that there really isn’t that much of a choice, if the facts about the commercial unavailability of certain products are true?
??? Again, what are you talking about? Are you not seeing all the posts that are in this thread?? Price was most certainly mentioned.
Here:
and here, in response to Wee Bairn:
and here:
My comments about price were in response to this direction that the thread took.
Regarding the rest of your post, my point was not that there are always American-made options. It was that if there aren’t, and if it is important to you to only buy American-made things (or non-made in China things), then you have the choice to not purchase the product at all. [I’m talking about consumer goods, so if you’re a builder and there are only Chinese nails available in the world, I guess you’re SOL.] If not purchasing things made in China is important to you (the general you), though, at some point it must be accepted that not every item will be available. That was what I was getting at when I mentioned that maybe we should just be buying less stuff. If you want to only buy made in the U.S. stuff, you need to start questioning whether you really, really need the things that may not be available to you.
Some people here have mentioned that they want to buy goods from countries and companies that pay a “living wage” to their employees. But this obviously varies depending on the local economy. In certain countries, a factory job paying a few dollars a day might be a wonderful thing to the residents of some countries.
If I remember correctly, this is what happened with Nike in Cambodia. Western protesters decried the “low wages” paid to the local workers, while the same local workers told the Western protesters to frig off, because they were being paid exponentially more than their friends and neighbors.
No.
??
No what? No it isn’t true? I seem to recall it happening in the 1990s.
I want to know what the original thought was if that was an expansion upon it!
I think it was a reply to the OP as stated. Very verbose of him.
Once.
Being in the computer hardware biz, I know full well what gets made where and why. The problem isn’t so much that these things are made in China, but they are made in China not under the control of the importers, and without adequate quality checks being made. External manufacturers often need a lot of supervision, and not just when the contract is signed. It’s clear that the culprits did it to save a few pennies, and to save some more pennies the people whose name was on the product didn’t send people to watch them and kick their asses when they tried it. Add in the lack of morals and ethics by a subset of Chinese manufacturers, plus corruption, and you have the current disaster.
Mmm.
I see someone mentioned the plight of factory workers in China. I recommend the movie Mardi Gras: Made in China.
It basically looks at how a majority of factories in China operate. The focal point of a village is the factory itself. The village is surrounded by a wall complete with barbed-wire. Inside this Village/factory/camp the workers work shifts around the clock with enough time between shifts to go back to a bunk, eat and sleep. All of this for literally pennies per day.
If everyone purposely refrained from purchasing a single $1 item made in China and instead purchsed an item manufactured in another country that adds up to a significant amount of money. It would make a statement against the “slave” like working conditions (which I’m sure exist elsewhere however, in the context of the OP we’re talking about China.). It would be a step towards correcting the current trade imbalance between our two countries, and it also shows a lack of support for China’s covertly subversive acts, specifically, towards the U.S.
cite for majority of factories? also cite for literally pennies per day?
there are obviously cases of abuse in china, but please avoid extrapolating the worst cases as being the norm.
as for ‘pennies per day’, this also is grossly exaggerated. more accurately would be dollars / day. generally factory workers net around $100/month, which is a ‘better deal’ than what they can earn in the impoverished countryside.