Chinese Toys Product Dumping in the Developing

Chinese Toys

Product Dumping in the Developing Sphere

The United States maintains an array of consumer protections through government regulatory oversight that are designed to preempt or recall the distribution of potentially hazardous products, attire or medication. These standards are based on a combination of liability issues, public health matters and economic imperatives. As the discussion here notes, however, said standards vary considerably according to nation. This gap in needs between those living in industrialized nations vs. those in the developing spheres largely serves as a justification for the variation in standards. However, as denoted by the article "Made in the U.S.A. -- Dumped in Brazil, Africa, Iraq . . ." this variance often leads to practices on the part of U.S. manufacturers and government agencies that are highly vulnerable to ethical scrutiny.

Indeed, as the article in question shows, the United States has made a regular practice out of approving the sales of items banned for U.S. consumption due to their hazardous nature through developing markets such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico and Iraq. This is a policy orientation that may strike the reader as particularly ironic given the host of issues relating to consumer safety and public health correlated to the swelling influx of Chinese products to the U.S. market. The high degree of unregulated and often unsafe production methods in China creates a heightened threat that such products will reach our store shelves and our homes. As a result, the United States has taken an aggressive role in attempting to bring greater regulatory oversight to production conducted between the borders of one of its top trading partners.

This strikes as a direct contrast to the policy position of U.S. government agencies and corporations as they approve the exporting of carcinogenic children's pajamas, unsafe birth control methods and unstable appetite stimulates to so-called 'third world' nations. This is largely done under the regulatory claim offered by the U.S. State Department that "no country should establish itself as the arbiter of others' health and safety standards. Individual governments are generally in the best position to establish standards of public health and safety." (p. 38)

This policy language has served as an allowance for manufacturers who have taken substantial losses in the U.S. market due to safety-driven bans to recoup some of their losses in less discriminating markets. The practice, known as dumping, is thrust into something of a complex ethical discussion. Namely, while it seems apparent on the service that greed and economic interest have coincided to encourage the practice of dumping by corporations and to permit this dumping on the part of the U.S. government, yet more complex priorities emerge. Namely, governments in those developing nations awaiting such products have often made the argument that the noted hazards are far outweighed by the public health and safety consequences of denying the import of such products. For instance, in Iraq where 400 citizens where killed by U.S. imported wheat and barley treated with mercury-based fungicides, Iraqi officials argued that far more would have died from starvation had the import been prevented by regulation.