USVI-On-Line

Do all of you who are griping about foreign goods drive American cars? Because I find it absolutely hilarious when someone tells me they don't buy stuff from China, but they drive a Honda.

No one in America supports American industry. We've all screwed ourselves, and we're paying for it. If you think the economy is bad now, wait until GM and Chrysler go bankrupt, because auto industry employs a lot more people than the coal industry (plus its residual industry like thousands of part suppliers, truckers, etc.)

I knew we were in big trouble when I found out a few years ago that the number one customer of Indian call centers is the U.S. student loan office. If the federal government doesn't have faith in the American worker, how can we expect any more than what we've got right now.

DELETED

I'm a chevy man myself.

loria – I get the limitations of your analogy. You were obviously referring to the lobbying in the mid-70’s prior to promulgation of the cotton dust standard (29 CFR 1910.1043) in June 1978.

Do we play by different standards that put us a competitive disadvantage? Yes. Do we need to put much more pressure on those that do not play by the same rules? 1000x yes.

Sometimes the free market does this pretty well. Insurance companies will no longer even write product liability insurance for US companies that have stuff made for them overseas unless they can prove that they have adequate product safety controls over there verified by 3rd party auditors. Product recalls have and will put small to medium size companies out of business and clobber the stock price of larger companies. The result? Products coming out of China will gradually improve.

The Wal Marts of the world could require that worker and environmental standards are also met in China or else they will not do business with them. They could do this – Wal Mart and Home Depot tell their vendors to bend over and the vendors say “how far?”. But this will happen ONLY if they think that their customers are willing to pay $6 for a pack of tube socks instead of $5. The immediate cost is apparent to all, but the long term benefits to the global community aren’t to most, so don’t expect this to happen any time soon.

actually, i wsan't referring quite to that--
what happened when the standard was promulgated is that the industry was forced to clean itself up--they compained that this would indeed bankrupt the industry here--it didn't, it actually made it more cost efficient in the long run (still these things for a vairety of reasons got outsourced as you know--the stadard IMHO was not chief among those reasons )
when , i think it was under Reagan, they tried to roll back the standard, if memory serves, the industry was like, no , it's all good....
the result was that we saved a lot of lungs and the industry gained efficiencies as well.

Still, i do thinkn that if we are doing business overseas and outsourcing (and esp when american companies are doing busness overseas) that they should be held to the same standards as they would be here.

DELETED

SJ,
am I to understand that you think it is ok for companies overseas (regardless of ownership) to poison their workers (for example)?
or that it is okay for US companies to export , for example , pesticides banned for agricultural use in the US to other countries for their use (where they will eventually find their way back to your table)
I hope that isn't what you are saying or advocating.

DELETED