China, The West’s Greatest Threat

We cannot walk into most department stores without seeing the shelves filled with products made in China or Mexico. Many people want to enact tariffs to allow American manufacturers to compete. It’s been proven in the past that tariffs only start trade wars. There are many goods in which Americans can only get from other countries. There are also many goods that that we no longer make in this country, and might never be made profitably in this country again.

We often think of cheap goods that are made in China, but it’s much more than that. Today I learned that California is putting a new 2050ft bridge over the San Francisco bay. That bridge is being made in China and shipped in sections for $500 million less than it could be made in the USA. -American workers are assembling the bridge.

Quote from NY Times:
Pan Zhongwang, a 55-year-old steel polisher, is a typical Zhenhua worker. He arrives at 7 a.m. and leaves at 11 p.m., often working seven days a week. He lives in a company dorm and earns about $12 a day.



 California officials decided not to accept any federal funds because that would have forced them to buy American. The Steel Workers Union is, of course, outraged, but they are part of the problem. It’s expensive union labor that partially forced the state to look to China.

China is taking over many construction projects in the western world. One of the biggest reasons countries and states are using China for projects, is because the construction company is state owned. The Chinese government is more than happy to finance these construction projects, while in the USA it’s getting harder and harder for construction companies to gain financing for projects.

What isn’t mentioned in any of the articles are the massive number of state and federal regulations in with which American companies must deal.  Every regulation drives up the cost of anything made in the USA. I personally dealt with many construction projects, and just dealing with personnel safety was expensive and time consuming.

Unless the USA, and the western world in general, changes its way of thinking, China will someday rule the world. The American worker will someday be the one working for pennies a day, while China dictates world policy.
Source: UK Telegraph