Stop the Toxic Trade Profit Cycle Killing Americans

"The Toxic Trader," a drama featuring an evil puppet, premiered last Tuesday in a special election-day staging outside U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith's district office in Portland, Oregon.

Toxic Trader. Yes, the double entendre is deliberate. The street theater is intended to hold free traders like Smith and presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain accountable for millions of U.S. jobs lost as multinationals move U.S. manufacturing overseas and for deadly imports - like faked Heparin medication and melamine-poisoned dog food -- shipped into this country.

Next, the show's red-caped "Toxic Avengers" will fend off the gargantuan puppet. "Toxic Trader," on a tour of free trader's district offices across America as part of the United Steelworker's appeal for fair trade.

In fair trade deals there would be, at the very least, provisions for enforcement of international environmental and labor laws. For starters, that would help prevent a situation in which American adult workers must try to compete with 13-year-old Chinese girls laboring 15-hour days, seven days a week, months at a time, manufacturing Christmas ornaments for pennies an hour, below the Chinese minimum wage and minimum age requirements, because they "voluntarily" agreed to it.

This USW effort sustains the "Stop Toxic Imports" campaign launched in September to inform parents about lead-tainted toys overwhelming the U.S. market, mainly from China. As part of that Protect-Our-Kids effort, the USW distributed thousands of lead testing kids, after four-year-old Jarnell Brown swallowed a 99% -lead pendant, produced in China, from his Reebok shoes and died from lead poisoning in a Minneapolis hospital on Feb. 22, 2006.

Unfortunately in the realm of free trade, what comes around goes around. The victims both times around are American working families. They lose their jobs when multinationals dismantle U.S. factories and move them overseas to take advantage of cheap labor forces, unenforced environmental laws, and virtually non-existent quality inspection. Then, those same working parents may lose a child or a pet or their own lives when those poisoned products are imported to the U.S.

Standing outside that vicious circle is the beneficiary of free trade -- multinationals. They've profited big time from the era of unrestricted international transactions that Bush brought them and McCain is pledging to continue.

One tragic circular situation involves tires and the decisions tire companies make. Tires get sold. Money gets made. People die.

This story starts six months after Jarnell Brown was poisoned, on Aug. 12, 2006. Four Philadelphia carpenters were driving home after a day's work framing houses when one of the tires of their van blew out. They crashed; two died, and a third suffered permanent brain damage.

An investigation disclosed that the tires, made by a Chinese company, Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. Ltd., and imported by Union, N.J.-based Foreign Tire Sales, did not contain a gum strip between belts to prevent separation.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered Foreign Tire Sales to recall the defective tires. FTS claimed it couldn't afford to do that. The carpenters' families sued FTS and Hangzhou, but the Chinese company is claiming it is absolved of responsibility because it did not do business in the U.S.

Around and around. Money got made. But no one wanted to be held responsible for deaths.

Light truck owners turned in only 10,000 of the quarter million defective Hangzhou tires, sparing FTS bankruptcy. The company found itself a new Chinese tire maker, Shandong Linglong Rubber Co. Ltd., and is now back on the profitability track.

Even after the bad experience with Hangzhou, it's not surprising that FTS returned to China for tires because China is the world's largest tire producer and exporter.

Contributing to that record for China is incredible investment by American companies like Goodyear, the top U.S. tire maker. Goodyear is in final talks to plunk down more than $1 billion for a manufacturing plant near the northeast Chinese city of Dalian, so the city's mayor told Reuters in February. Goodyear would join rivals Michelin, Continental AG and Bridgestone Corp. in setting up or expanding production in China.

Goodyear already has a tire plant in Dalian, one that it just spent four years and $140 million expanding. The factory employs 840 and operates seven days a week, four shifts a day. Goodyear also operates tire plants in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

Until very recently, tires like the ones that failed on the carpenters' van in Philadelphia were made in Tyler, Texas -- by Steelworkers employed by Goodyear.

In 2006, Goodyear announced it would close the Tyler plant in favor of low cost imports. Even the enticement of $12 million in tax breaks didn't change the company's mind. So 725 American workers lost their jobs.

Workers in Texas could not compete with those in China laboring long days, for pennies an hour, in hazardous working conditions, in places where environmental regulations are not enforced and, as the Philadelphia incident shows, quality standards are not imposed.

Round and round it goes. American workers lost their jobs. American tire buyers lost their lives. Goodyear made $602 million in profits last year and Chinese tire companies made untold millions.

The Toxic Avengers will appear in Ohio Wednesday. They've been invited by free trade opponent Sherrod Brown, a U.S. Senator from Ohio. Brown, who has fought fair trade as long as he has represented his state, offered the stage for "The Toxic Trader" because he has seen too many jobs roll out of his state and return from China in the form of Chinese catfish tainted with illegal veterinary drugs, toothpaste poisoned with a chemical used in antifreeze, and defective and dangerous "red lead" steel.

He wants to stop this hazardous cycle. Like the Steelworkers, he wants fair trade.

The Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Company incident and other case studies are contained in the report, "The Toxic Truth," to be released soon and available on the USW web site.

Comments

[Cathexis]

It's funny ... they used to say that Capitalists will sell the rope used to hang them. Instead, we'll gut our Economic engines in order for the Top Dogs to accumulate as much as quickly a spossible -- selling tomorrow to gorge today.

But at some point ... who will buy the crap, no matter how cheap it is? Not the former American Middle Class ... they won't have Middle Class incomes any more. Not the exploited Asian workers ... they don't make enough.

The engine sputters and dies.

Then what?

[walk0nwalls]

Yeah, you try and push for that. Literally in my mind if anyone actually pushed for an international fair trade coalition with the wholesale establishment of strong and functioning labor unions, he would get shot so fast you wouldn't even see the bullet whipping him into the grave.

The robber barons have always been there, the game just got bigger.

[outnow]

There should be one simple test for all policies: Does it promote the interests of the middle class in America. With free trade, there are analyses as to who benefits and what sectors of the economy are benefited. Fair trade is a good concept but limited. Does it really solve the dilemma that Chinese workers, for example, have a lower standard of living and cost of living. To "compete" you or I or your children will have to be able to live on what the cost of living is in China. At the risk of being called "protectionist" I believe that "free trade" can only exist between countries on an equal economic footing. We all know that the real issue to multinational corporations is to minimize labor costs and to avoid environmental regulations. It is interesting to see the mountains in China etched by acid rain and the rivers flowing with yellow filth. In Peru and Chile, the mercury pollutes the water from the mining operations. Most "companies" have an overpaid CEO in New York and a slave army of underpaid workers overseas polluting the environment and destroying rain forests. American have lost all sense of morality and communality in the relentless pursuit of profits and consumerism. Globalization promotes a lack of real communality in America and abroad. it is the final stage of alienation of mankind. How many really care that 67,000 Chinese were killed by poor building standards, not earthquake damage which left all the good buildings standing?

[swift goat pet for truth]

Working Families?

Working families don't contribute $$$$ to political campaigns.
No big political contributions, no representation.

That is the way the world works.

[dadw5boys]

STOP USING U.S. TAX DOLLARS TO PAY AMERICAN BUSINESSES TO MOVE OVERSEAS!!!!!!!

NEIL BUSH TAKES PLANE LOADS OF BUSINESSMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD TO FIND A PLACE TO MOVE THEIR BUSINESS AND THE TAX PAYERS ARE BILLED FOR IT.

THE TAX PAYERS ARE BILLED TO MOVE THE BUSINESSES TOO.

THIS IS SICK!!!!!!!!

[americaforme]

All for the not so mighty Buck,outsourcing name is beefed up with Free Trade... Dont we have a name for that? Too good to be true...Run for your life...We seniors experience these con artist, on a regular basis. It really slays me that our Gov. has endorsed big business bull.!!! How to unwind this disaster is another story. We're pretty much up a creek, .without a paddle...To convince congress that they have been blindsided, will take an absolute miracle. We have to hold their hand when they cross the street now. Good luck, keep writing.

[WIpatriot]

Congress: Vote them out!!

[Soulsurfer]

We're about to enter another phase, where Americans can no longer afford the tires, TV's, computers, and everything else made overseas.......because no one will have a job, except in the armed forces. I've been pushed out of 2 careers already, one from illegal immigrants, another from outsourcing. Halliburton moved to Dubai, others have P.O. boxes in Bermuda, Intel brings in Indian tech engineers for "training" here in Silicon Valley, software and semiconductor companies whine to Congress for more H1B visas, ConAgra can't exist without Mexican laborers. It makes no sense to me, I like to buy American, but we don't make anything, much. And no, I don't want to go back to school AGAIN. Is Denny's hiring?

[dadw5boys]

Dick Cheny said of the U.S. Soldiers," They Volunteered ", when he was ask if it did not bother him that so many were getting killed in Iraq!

[WIpatriot]

How elitist of him!

[outnow]

John Kerry stated that kids should stay in school or they would end up in Iraq. That comment lost him the nomination. But there is a great deal of truth in these comments by both Kerry and Cheney. Cheney didn't go into military service because he was after money and power. Maybe it is elitist, especially when the propaganda glorifies and justifies the wars.