[JACKRUSSELL]

”Made in China” Ping.

(Please FReepmail me if you would like to be on or off of the list.)

[mamelukesabre]

Why don’t we just ask mexico if they want the job of growing our food?

[Ronin]

Maybe so, but I still won’t touch Chinese produce.

There are still plenty of small farms outside and even inside Tokyo, and if the price is a bit higher, such is the cost of quality.

[Last Dakotan]

Nobody knows trade barriers like the Japanese.

[Zhang Fei]

Spinach now costs about $4 a pound in suburban Tokyo, two to two and a half times what an American might pay, though most of that difference results from other factors, like Japan’s archaic distribution system.

Here's the key passage. At $4 a pound, we don't need Chinese produce. We could buy Thai, Colombian, etc for half as much, without the fussy inspections. The Japanese system isn't so much a safety inspection system as it is a way to keep foreign products out. It's probably one of the things that has kept Japan's economic growth at roughly zero over the past 20 years. If we go down this road for countries other than China, we can expect trade wars the world over.