India: a friend, not a lackey
Democracies don’t fight democracies, and two democracies with thick webs of economic interdependence you should have a long-term stable relationship.
Some in India on the Left are concerned that the government has surrendered sovereignty to the U.S. with the nuclear deal. This really may be little more than a thinly veiled antipathy toward the U.S., but it’s making a lot of noise in India at the moment.
The long-term trend, however, favors deeper ties. Not dependency, but interdependency.
Mittal, who is also president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, said the nuclear accord would be a touchstone of far broader cooperation between the countries in everything from pharmaceuticals to agriculture. “If America and India are really seen as allies, as great partners in progress, you will see trade multiply,” he said.
Beyond the talk of shared values, good will for Americans, their culture, even their government prevails among many Indians. Indians make up the largest number of foreign students in the United States, and they get the largest number of work visas to the United States, according to the American Embassy here. Last year, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 56 percent of Indians surveyed had a favorable view of the United States, second only to Japanese’s view.
Now it’s pajamas
I’ve pretty much sworn off reporting the unsafe Chinese product of the week, but for pajamas I’ll make an exception.
The safety problems affecting Chinese goods spread from toys to textiles on Monday as New Zealand said it would investigate allegations that imported children’s clothes contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde.
The government ordered the probe after scientists hired by a consumer watchdog programme discovered formaldehyde in Chinese clothes at levels of up to 900 times regarded as safe. Manufacturers sometimes apply formaldehyde to clothes to prevent mildew. It can cause skin rashes, irritation to the eyes and throat and allergic reactions.
This one strikes me as annoying but not really dangerous, unless you are highly allergic.
Consumer panic is what tiggers do best
In the Winnie the Pooh movies, Tigger is constantly “bouncing” the neighbors, to which they object, to which he replies, “bouncing is what Tiggers do best.”
So now the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, CA is looking for a little cheap publicity by jumping on the “China is poisoning us with lead bandwagon.” They claim to have found, horrors, that certain bibs sold in Toys ‘R’ Us stores, have 3x the allowed lead levels in … baby bibs, of all things. They even give details, so you can freak out and run to the store with them:
The vinyl bibs, which feature illustrations of baseball bats and soccer balls and Disney’s Winnie the Pooh characters, are sold for less than $5 each under store-brand labels, including Especially for Baby and Koala Baby.
Tests this summer, financed by the Center for Environmental Health of Oakland, California, found lead as high as three times the level allowed in paint in several styles of the bibs purchased from both Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us stores in California.
A separate test by a laboratory hired by The New York Times of the same Toys ‘R’ Us bibs, purchased in Maryland, found a similar level of contamination.
But hold on. Let’s put this in perspective. First, U.S. standards are so protective I would be shocked if a 3X violation represented real risk. Second, there is question whether there is any violation at all. Toys ‘R’ Us did its own tests and found no violations, and the CPSC says it has as well:
Officials from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates children’s products, said they agreed that lead had no place in bibs.
But their own recent tests of baby bibs on the market in the United States found that the lead, when present, was at levels low enough that a child chewing on or rubbing the bib would not get an unhealthy dose.
It’s always hard to parse this kind of thing. The panic industry in the enviro-media industrial complex has every incentive to overplay such a story. But China has no business exceeding the formal limits, if they are. Which seems a bit in doubt. However, U.S. limits on this sort of thing are generally so hyper-protective that a 3X probably represents no real risk.
Someone please write this book
A Hong Kong boss of the company that made lead-tainted toys has hanged himself:
Lee Der made 967,000 toys recalled this month by the US toy company Mattel Inc because they were made with paint found to contain excessive amounts of lead. The plastic pre-school toys, sold under the Fisher-Price brand in the US, included the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters.
I’ve argued earlier that the problem here runs much deeper than just oversight or rigor. There is a profound institutional insight here that someone less distracted than I should write a book on. This doesn’t happen in the modern West. Why? Stockholder oversight? Threat of lawsuits? Government regulation kept honest by diverse NGOs? Free and aggressive media? Employee whistle blowing?
Somebody please write this book.
An offer you can’t refuse
Oh, my, said the Godfather, what a sweet little girl you have there. Would be a shame if something happened to her, now, wouldn’t it? And, you know, the last thing we would want would be for something to happen to her.
Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.Described as China’s “nuclear option” in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.
Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing’s foreign reserves should be used as a “bargaining chip” in talks with the US.
“Of course, China doesn’t want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order,” he added.
No, I’m sure you wouldn’t. Now, what were your demands, exactly? And why do we find ourselves at your mercy?
Unions branch out
The International Association of Machinists is poised to make a primary endorsement of both a Democrat and a Republican. This is, of course, a shift from the traditional Union posture–Teamster’s excepted–of being wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. As this NY Times blog notes, 35% of union members do vote Republican, and overt Democratic activism has been a source of legal and political friction.
It also appears they have more to work with than I might have thought.
Mr. Sloan, who is close to the union’s president, Tom Buffenbarger, had kind words for several Republican candidates. He praised Rudy Giuliani for having opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. He said Representative Duncan Hunter of California was “very good on defending jobs and the impact of trade on our shrinking manufacturing base.” In addition, he lauded former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas for his ideas on doing more to prepare the nation’s youth for the work force.
I have to admit I had no idea Giuliani opposed NAFTA. It was so long ago, I didn’t think to check. But it doesn’t speak well of him in my book. It suggests pandering, intellectual softness, or Perot-like lunacy, and I don’t think he is prone to the latter two.
Outsourcing outsourcing to Egypt
In a story that sounds like something right out of The Onion, Egypt is actually trying to persuade India to outsource its outsourced call center traffic there.
As it makes its pitch to the world, touting a multilingual workforce over India’s English-speakers, a time zone shared with Europe and proximity to the US, Egypt is marketing its edge over India to India itself.
The government has sent a high-level delegation to India to convince the IT behemoth to sub-outsource its outsourcing to Egypt.
If the strategy all along has been to encourage customers to solve problems on their own, this could be a huge leap forward.
China’s hits just keep on comin’
When this whole China thing started with glycol toothpaste and tainted fish, I thought, well, as long as you don’t put it in your mouth, you’re probably OK. Hah! Now they’re on a roll with lead. First it was lead paint in Fischer Price toys–Elmo no less–and now its lead in jewelry.
Inspections by the Consumer Product Safety Commission of 85 pieces of jewelry collected since last fall from retailers and importers determined that 20 percent still posed a potential poisoning hazard. Separate surveys by health officials or lead experts in Ohio, Massachusetts and Maryland found even higher percentages.The unannounced U.S. inspections also left no doubt about the primary source of the threat: of the 17.9 million pieces of jewelry items pulled from the market since the start of 2005, 95 percent were made in China.
This whole thing with China’s products being dangerous to individual consumers shouldn’t come as such a surprise, I suppose. The extraordinary preoccupation in the West with consumer and product safety is a reflection of our preoccupation with the protection of individuals as the unique end of government. China does not share that preoccupation, putting it mildly.
Shut up, they explained
China says ‘over 99% of exports safe’. FT reports:
In recent weeks, China has launched a co-ordinated public relations drive to try to show it is taking seriously criticism of the quality of its goods, although it has also attacked foreign media for exaggerating the safety risks.
Problem: it’s hard to be reassuring on improvement when half your energy is aimed at the attacking the messenger. Sincerity naturally will be questioned.
China pulls another boner
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Fischer-Price is recalling nearly a million Chinese-made toys which were–brace yourselves–painted with lead paint. Guys, that is so 1958. Is there some kind of stupid virus going around over there?
Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys — including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters — because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.
The worldwide recall being announced Thursday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor and sold in the United States between May and August. It is the latest in a wave of recalls that has heightened global concern about the safety of Chinese-made products.
China incinerates homing pigeons
That’s right: incincerates.
This trade war with China starts to sound like an article from The Onion. First it was pig’s ears, now it’s homing pigeons:
Inspectors at Beijing’s airport discovered severe problems with the birds, which were killed and incinerated, the Chinese government said. Health certification was said to be incorrect and the number shipped failed to correspond with documents.
And this:
The US has also banned Chinese shrimp, and four types of fish after finding traces of chemicals that cause cancer. China has retaliated by suspending some US pork and poultry imports, citing disease concerns. Pigeon raising is a widespread in China, and the birds are also a popular restaurant dish.
They couldn’t just ban them. Or BBQ them. They had to seize them and … incinerate them.
It seems pretty clear that China doesn’t even feel the need to pretend that their payback moves are based on real concerns. They’re just being petulant and bratty about getting caught with their pants down on exporting really bad consumer goods.
That petulance is not a good sign about their intent to solve the problems.
Chinese have a beef with our pig ears
Tit for tat. The Chinese are miffed that the world didn’t react well their adulterated food, drug and toothpaste products. So now, it’s payback time.
Increasingly, the Chinese authorities have responded by prominently announcing their own rejections of imports, including orange pulp, dried apricots, raisins and health supplements from the United States - apparently to show that they are not the only ones with food-safety problems.
Most recently, China suspended some U.S. imports of chicken feet and pigs’ ears.
Far as I can tell, they don’t have a problem with the quality of the ears and feet. It’s clearly just payback.
[But I’m not surprised that anyone who eats pig ears and chicken feet would be indifferent to Western squeamishness on food and drug products. I remember going to a Dim Sum restaurant in Oakland’s China Town. Much of the food was great, but I was stumped by this curious looking dish in a sauce that looked like some kind of root. One nibble revealed the knuckle of the chicken foot. Wow, was that ever a revelation. It is worth noting, however, that the British in the 18th Century did it pig ears. I’m sure that assorted cultures and subcultures as close to home as the American South do (did) as well, but that isn’t, I think, any excuse.]
