Why I'm Breaking Up with China

CNN headline: “Trump’s Trade War About to Change the Way You Shop.” Waaaay ahead of you, sport. If it means fewer pieces of Sino-sourced junk, sorry: too late. I’ve already made that change.

My first revelation about Chinese business ethics arose from the gift of an electric shaver. I already had one, a Philips device that shaved close without feeling like you were exfoliating with a cheese grater. The gifter didn’t know I had one and thought this sleek device would be a swell present. The brand was HAPPYLIF or something. Maybe SWEETDAY or GOODSMILE. It was an exact duplicate of the Philips razor.

Contours, control, size, color: total clone. Imagine someone releasing an exact duplicate of the song “Stairway to Heaven” and calling it “Escalator to Paradise” -- they’d be sued. But in this case it seems the factory specs made a stop at the photocopier before they went to the Philips plant. They probably built the factory right across the street. The key difference? The HAPPYLIF probably has a chip that connects to my wireless network and pings a server in China somewhere to report on whether my router has talked to the stove lately.

A while ago I bought an eggbeater on Amazon. I think it was made by GHRTXLY. Could’ve been TKYIO. You pumped it up and down, the blades swirled, the eggs were duly wrecked. After a few months it spat a thick black ichor into the bowl. Lucky me, I’d bought a two-pack! The second one leaked lubricant after a while, so I bought another, this time from LUCKKYMI (company motto: “We are commit to happy lifestyle for you to the dreams of the time”). This one was identical to the others, had hundreds of reviews:

“Completely satisfied. Do the love it for my eggs.”
“My husband has been using it for his satisfied eggs.”
“Love the satisfaction of the easeful way now.”

A smattering of one-star reviews: “Bled oil.” “Poisonous fluid issues.” “Bad if you’re the captain of the Exxon Valdez, brings back memories.” But it was only four dollars, so I threw it in the cart. It arrived, performed well, and suffered incontinence within a fortnight. THAT’S IT! Oil me once, shame on you, but oil me thrice, shame on me. I bought a whisk.

My friends, the handle of the whisk broke after one use. That was the end of me and China. I learned two important lessons: (1) It is worth it to pay more for something that lasts, and (2) it is nice if you can get in your car and drive to the factory and complain. I could, conceivably, drive to a factory in Ohio, present myself at the front desk with a leaky egg-wrecker, and ask to speak to someone. If they did not wish to assist, I could go to the local TV station and tell them how I’d driven 14 hours to express my displeasure, and I’m sure the keen folk at the Action News Team, sniffing a good “On Your Behalf!” story, would end up getting the CEO to apologize on camera and present me with a new one. I would probably go viral, too.

Try that with China. Passport control would be fun. “Reason for visiting?” To induce a remnant twinge of shame in the breast of the manager of the Tsingtao Industrial Sector Factory 45, that’s what. I think the next thing I would say is, “Sorry, I don’t speak Uyghur.”

So I’m done with the cheap stuff. That leaves the necessary stuff, unfortunately. Tiny thin circular batteries for garage-door openers, for example. I don’t think I can make my own. It’s possible someone could open a plant in the U.S. to make them, providing that the local NIMBYs didn’t shriek with horror at the thought of all those nasty metals, which would no doubt leach into the water supply and cause children to develop mutant superpowers. But perhaps there could be an executive order overriding the EPA, the Make America Enjoy Domestically Produced Button Batteries Again EO, and then it would go to the Supreme Court, where the justices would shake their heads because this was the 14th one today. The last one was an EO that mandated the use of AI-re-created Paul Harvey monologues on Voice of America.

Four years later, the battery plant opens after much legal wrangling, and President Gavin Newsom takes credit for re-shoring American jobs.