FAIR TRADE, NOT FREE TRADE

The headlines are clear: Tainted Chinese Imports Common. Federal agencies are being swamped with trade violations by the Chinese, and we're not just talking economic policy infractions, but on a scale we are only beginning to realize, the Communists are unlawfully exporting life-threatening choices to American consumers on the prowl for a kinder, gentler hit at the meat and potatoes counter.

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These consumables were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught — many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

Now the confluence of two events—the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week’s resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China—has provoked activists and members of Congress now demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.

Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.”

Let's analyze this briefly. Free marketers announce proudly, "But hey… this is alright. Capitalism and open markets. This will rectify itself. And others cringe, questioning in old liguistic patterns, “Wait a minute, capitalism in bed with communism?”

But seriously folks, we must fully realize by now that there's little difference in how the prevailing economic pie is doled out in either hybrid system that impacts the bottom line when considering the question of contaminated product. It's nation against nation, cut-throat policies are cut-throat policies, PERIOD.

Those who are concerned that China’s and the U.S.’ economies are so PERILOUSLY “in bed” with each othe miss the point. This is chemical warfare first, economical warfare second. The idea that unregulated “capitalism in bed with communism” via unregulated free markets will somehow, miraculously, “right itself” fails to consider the possible catastrophic dangers of greed and related corruptions on both sides of the market divide.

Body count? How boring, they say. After the bodies pile up, they will of course soon vanish into the fiscal ledger of last year's bottom line, and the well-crafted mantra that capitalism by its very nature will level things out again out and everybody that's anybody will benefit from it in the long run, just seems like good business.

While so-called free markets are “righting themselves”, let's be honest that Chinese officials continue to incarcerate or worse, convince bullets into the brains of their reformers, hand in hand with exporting poisons and cheap, useless products into the US. Meanwhile, body counts in both countries mount…

There is no such animal as a free market economy. We scream out for a righteous and fair market economy.