Here’s an article I bookmarked last year that probably provides some hints:
“Vitamin C prices have spiked this year. China controls 80 percent of the market.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0720/p01s01-woap.html
There have been several attempts at legislation to require that country of orgin be provided on more items, particularly imported food items. But lobbyists and bought and paid for congressmen and senators have managed to defeat most attempts . There were attempts to revive some of that legislation lately as more and more horror stories of lead paint and other problems with Chinese imports surfaced, but I haven’t heard how that fared.
This story of China cornering the market on Vitamin C is also a lesson for our resident free trade ideologues. Once a cheap labor nation like China has lured a big chunk of the production of a specific item, then the monopolistic instincts kick in and they begin to raise prices.
We’ll see more of that as more production is moved to the world’s cheapest labor. After all the destroyed industries in the US, and the lost jobs for families and communities, many products will be no cheaper than they were a decade or two ago when so-called free trade began to (predictably) destroy unprotected industries (yes, ‘free’ trade agreements protect some industries and expose others).
That one article contains many things to be thought about, by critical thinkers, not by a bunch of so-called free traders regurgitating what they heard some college economics professor say years ago.
Thank you.
Are we able here at FR to push this? Let us find out more information and move this important issue that affects all Americans forward!
It would be fascinatingly interesting to find out who the congress critters are who kiboshed the legistation. And the companies that the lobbyists are represnting.