| Apparently, almost all of the world's saline bags were made in Puerto Rico, and a single hurricane disrupted this essential gear. There have been longstanding concerns about strategic food - and even Oil supply, I don't see how the US or any nation can reasonably not have the domestic demand to meet an emergency. China has been engaging in a form of systematic dumping on a variety of industries for quite a long time - most of us enjoyed the benefits of lower prices while local producers went out of business. The nefariousness of their strategy is that it's often difficult to tell the difference between simple 'low-cost advantage' vs. actual dumping strategies, and who in the business world is going to argue against lower prices? Nobody. The US military certainly wouldn't have 99% of their ammunition 'made in China', well, war is much more than bullets, moreover, there's much more to life than war ... It's definitely time to have national regulations on a lot of such goods. A simple ban on the import of strategic goods would work really well - America is large enough that there'd be several domestic providers. Americans would end up paying more for certain items, but does it really matter when the surpluses are so large? So it costs $4 per mask instead of $2? The price is not as important as availability. It would be a very natural and synergistic way to increase wages as well. This could be done in concert with a few key allies on a product by product basis. |