2020 Presidential Election

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

I have been saying this! While it is true that companies may look for alternatives to china (one of our manufacturers at my company has already said this) the bill is not going coming out of China’s pocket. The distributors and the customers are the ones paying more.

It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

To me this whole issue is just poking the bear.

It is not just consumers being hurt by the tariffs:

Is This the End of Recycling?

After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.

But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.

For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.

Most are choosing the latter.

This is disturbing for two reasons: one is that recycling has stopped happening in a lot of places.

The other reason is that we have to ship our recyclables overseas because preparing the recyclables is so labor intensive that it cannot be done in countries where labor has any rights.

Even without the tariffs, our recycling contributes to labor exploitation, possibly even child labor.