The Back Side of all those Cheap Chinese-Made Goods
Intermodal containers. Mountains of them. Millions of them. Stacked up at truckyards and railyards all over the country.
They're not going back to China with American-made goods, since there's hardly anything we make that China can't make themselves. They don't need the containers back -- they can always make more using cheap Chinese labor and steel. So they sit. And sit, and sit, and sit. Either melting them down for scrap or turning them into pre-fab housing units are the only solutions.
And it's not just China with which we have the kind of trade deficit that has generated this glut of shipping containers. It's Japan, South Korea, Mexico and pretty much any other country that's on the origin labels on the things you buy.
This is the back side of all those $15.00 discount-store shoes and $100 19" flatscreen TV's. Congratulations, Americans. You're ready to trample each other to death for doorbuster deals on Thanksgiving night. You wanted cheap, and you got it. And I guess as long as all those shipping containers aren't in your face, it's all good. But there's no free lunch. There never was.
The Back Side of all those Cheap Chinese-Made Goods
Intermodal containers. Mountains of them. Millions of them. Stacked up at truckyards and railyards all over the country.
They're not going back to China with American-made goods, since there's hardly anything we make that China can't make themselves. They don't need the containers back -- they can always make more using cheap Chinese labor and steel. So they sit. And sit, and sit, and sit. Either melting them down for scrap or turning them into pre-fab housing units are the only solutions.
And it's not just China with which we have the kind of trade deficit that has generated this glut of shipping containers. It's Japan, South Korea, Mexico and pretty much any other country that's on the origin labels on the things you buy.
This is the back side of all those $15.00 discount-store shoes and $100 19" flatscreen TV's. Congratulations, Americans. You're ready to trample each other to death for doorbuster deals on Thanksgiving night. You wanted cheap, and you got it. And I guess as long as all those shipping containers aren't in your face, it's all good. But there's no free lunch. There never was.