LONDON — Two Chinese companies were offering a risky proposition: two million home test kits said to detect antibodies for the coronavirus for at least $20 million, take it or leave it.
The asking price was high, the technology was unproven and the money had to be paid upfront. And the buyer would be required to pick up the crate loads of test kits from a facility in China.
Yet British officials took the deal, according to a senior civil servant involved, then confidently promised tests would be available at pharmacies in as little as two weeks. “As simple as a pregnancy test,” gushed Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “It has the potential to be a total game changer.”

[b]There was one problem, however. The tests did not work.[/b]

China has become one of the world’s greatest economies primarily due to American consumerism.

While the disparity between the super rich and the middle class has broadened over the last 20 years, Americans have been, by and large, well off.

Or at least we think so.

We buy shit all the time. We focus on brands, and kicks, and the latest cell phone. But, we won’t work the farms. We won’t work in textile mills. Those jobs are beneath us.

We empower companies like WalMart to put our neighbors out of business.

And we buy stuff made overseas because countries like China, India and others have desperate folks who will work for a pittance.

And, by the way, Chinese products made to spec are every bit as good as things made elsewhere. But when they are paid to make a shitty product and an American company can market it because Americans would buy it...

For people that complain about products made elsewhere, look around. You love stuff made elsewhere. You probably don’t know it.

You want better products in the US? Stop bitching about immigration. Immigrants will make us stronger.

Your “it’s just a flu” angle was dumb, and this is even dumber.

The average American worker can only afford cheap.
Republican administrations have seen to that!

Long and the short at present Communism is beating Capitalism.

That's why you're all going out of lockdown first even though your risk hasn't peaked.

And you know when I was a little kid I never thought I'd see Communism beating Capitalism especially at its own game. Hats off to the Chinese.

"A communist country can not survive in a Capitalist world" so that was innaccurate 🤣

Thanks , but it was only the truth from a news article.🙂

I think it would be far more impactful if retailers would refuse to buy said products.

I don't want to have to wear a magnifying glass round my neck to read the fine print on every single thing I need or buy...and where I buy so many things online, that information is not always available. I know what clothing is made in China on Zulily from shopping RoseWe and similar sites, because it all looks exactly the same, and it's all three sizes too small.

I just went round and checked two items I just purchased. You would think that praline coated pecans would be grown in the USA...but the legalise on the back panel said that they are [i]packaged and processed[/i] in the USA...not necessarily grown here, apparently...and after I waded through a lot more, I discovered that Costco was the distributor, but they were packaged and processed in Seattle.

The same thing with the Kleenex that recently arrived in the mail. Distributed by a Worldwide corporation...so I read further and yet further...and found out the parent company is located in Wisconsin...and the kleenex IS in fact made in the USA.

So...that was two items. How many people are going to stand there and read and wade through the language that is used to try to conceal origins, in the case of the pecans, for example. Those two items took me 15 minutes. Maybe one, or two people will do that.

Most people...average people...want to walk into a store and grab what's on the shelves...and if they can they usually buy what they know is the best and the cheapest both.

It's the game politicians play .... higher minimum wages, high taxes, welfare, government restrictions together make US products unaffordable, including making them unaffordable to the American people who see half or more of their income going out in some form of taxes.

So open the door wider for products made in places where there is no minimum wage, no worker protections, no pollution restrictions, lower taxes, and often no freedom. It's the modern manifestation of colonialism, but without having the trouble and expense of running the colonies. If the colony misbehaves, just pack up and find another colony.

To me it is a case of evolution other countries and system's evolved be it Communism or socialism they built a form of capitalism into the system along the way and perfected it. And as far as goods go we ourselves in countries in Europe and America etc started making pretty poor quality stuff way before things said made in China on them. So that we cannot blame them for. I know plenty of car collectors some collect American cars from up until 1969 but they won't touch anything after that as they consider it junk

It was Transistor radios, not sure if it was China or Japan yet they were all the rage in the 60s n 70s.
During the Ronald Reagan years his economic structure seemed to make improvements.
We need another structure to help self sufficiency. Our Farmers are hurting ☹️ along with so much else this dam had crushed us!
Sorry Chemical/germ warfare comes to mind!!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1td5sWHOshM]

I presume the “China Virus”, not the “Kansas Virus“ killed Frederick Trump...

But hell “I dint know people died from the flu”

Remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug made by the Bay Area's Gilead Sciences, reportedly had a successful clinical trial in Chicago.
"The Boston Globe's STAT News reported Thursday that Dr. Kathleen Mullane, an infectious disease specialist at University of Chicago Medicine overseeing the hospital's remdesivir studies, informed other faculty members that the results of the trials were encouraging."

I would have thought the commie-bashing angle might be a little outdated , even for you , but apparently not. Let's thank our old pals at Fox once again. What would we (you) do without them ?

If no one bought things from China, Ivanka's business would go belly up.
Do you want to be responsible for putting a trump out of business, bud? Shame on you.

I try not to but most everything nowadays is "made in China", which sucks. I have a big problem with their quality as well.

Lol. What you described is literally the result of capitalism backed by 300 years of evidence but duh....blame commies.

Jeez......still falling for taxonomy. The Chinese government are free market psychos as well, they aren't communists

I don’t have anything a against Chinese but I do wish Americans would stop being so greedy.

"UK volunteers could be given the first dose of a potential coronavirus vaccine within the next week, researchers say.
Experts at the University of Oxford are working hard to develop a vaccine that could prevent people from getting Covid-19.
They hope to have a candidate ready for clinical trials soon, and as part of their preparations the team aims to have at least a million doses available by about September."

And sorry Trump's total incompetence during this pandemic is his fault not China or the CCP.

This is totally off topic, but in the first sentence that should be spelled [i]Americans[/i] and not [i]American's.[/i] It's a plural, not a possessive.

Sorry. It's a persistent pet peeve of mine.

I hark back to the days when Sam Walton made commercials for Made in America. It was their marketing strategy. Henry Kissinger and the Clintons had a lot to do with the exploding importation of goods from China. Hillary was legal council for Walmart. Yes, the Arkansas connection.

You are both correct and wrong.
Yes it was Kmart. I know this well because my father bought me a put together yourself motorcycle in a huge crate. The make and model was a CZ 180cc from the then called Czechoslovakia a Soviet block country then.

Notice that wasn't China. They had products from all over the world. Other Asian countries where often found say like India and even some Great Britain.

Perhaps you might even recall a now recently bankrupt company called Pier one imports? They had things from all over the world as well. They came around at just about the same time.

The problem isn't the importation of foreign products. American products at that time were exorbitantly overpriced. Hence why father had to go to Kmart. And then even put it together myself. I learned a lot from just doing that with the help of my brother.

The problem is letting other countries get a strangle hold on us. Foreign products do make the American companies far more competitive.

So what did a good majority of American manufacturers do? They subletted out the parts manufacturing to the Taiwanese! And then eventually the Japanese and Chinese.

This wasn't done by the government. This was done by the major manufacturers themselves in retaliation for cheaper products from other areas around the world like my motorcycle from Czechoslovakia. BTW It was a great motorcycle!

What we as a country should do is diversify even more. Push the companies that went only just Asia throughout the world and not just into one area. Why not use resources from Africa, South America, India, and yes even Europe and Australia.

Doing so will not allow any one country get a strangle hold on us.

Sadly Bud,
This has been going on for years. When I worked in the jewelry business (costume Jewelry) they made everything local,solder, clean, paint etc. You got a quality product.
Then the owners wrote off a trip to Hong Kong! They agreed to purchase a ton of garbage produced over there! Yes it saved THEM money yet many business 😡 suffered including the employees.
The problem I find also is this country got too caught up in greed, just like explained above. We out priced ourselves as a whole. People need to make money here in order to servive.
IE ( When budgeting back in 1982!!) I supported myself on minimum wage. Yet kept it very simple. Nowadays this couldn't be done. I live in AZ you could rent a 1 bed apartment for 750 6 years ago or so. That same place is 1000+
Our economy needs a clean up.
Too many things changed for the worst.

The best reasons for returning manufacturing here ... is we can, it makes sense and it is good.

The only reasons manufacturing moved overseas, is inflexible union contracts and EPA regulations

Both have changed under Trump

And we should bring the manufacturing back ... of key products and key supply chains

I concur with your summary of facts, your identification of the communist party as the problem, and the need for consumers to avoid purchasing Chinese goods. And I will do so to the extent I can. However, it is likely that any product with electronics or contains rare earth metals (i.e., any hight tech product) has a China nexus so I suspect it is practically impossible.

I'd love to quit buying made in China but everything is made in China. These corporations were dead wrong to move all their business to China so they can pay for cheap labor in stead of pay people what they are worth. Now they've given way too much power to China and have really hurt the U.S.

I always try to get things more locally, but once in a while there are no options. I will gladly pay a bit more if I can get something better and don't have to wait forever for it to get here.

In many areas the Chinese have become successful capitalists. They've used their cheap labour, poor working conditions and stolen patents to create manufacturing monopolies. Thus, I can't find many items previously invented and produced in the UK because the multi-national corporations who bought up the original firms outsourced the manufacture to China or other cheaper countries. I guess you have the same issue in the USA and no matter how hard you look for locally produced items at a price you can afford (or want to pay) the corporations' profit margin has denied you that option.

I don't know. All of this might have been worth it if they keep making cool knock off toys.

I think many people here share that view. Rather than buy poor quality objects made with slave labour, buy higher quality products and keep people here (In Scotland in my case) in a job. We're cutting our own throats by buying cheap imports, and keeping the sweatshop labour market thriving.

Interesting...

It’s a good exercise to research and consider
What % of personal spending in the USA goes on
1) Chinese goods
2) accommodation / housing
3) healthcare

I'm gonna tell my kids this was repeated head trauma

Even disease is made by them.

[b][u]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9[/u][/b]

Yessir

Stop blaming the supplier, blame the people who buy their junk..

No

time out. "willing to accept lesser quality for lower prices"? uh [b]no[/b] - the 1% ruling class in America saw a chance to increase profits (despite cutting American jobs and selling shit products) and took it