Hackensack, N.J. – Susan Kuperman pulls a 12-cup Mr. Coffee machine off a shelf at the Target in Hackensack and spies a label on the box.
“Made in China.”
She glances down the row of models by Black & Decker, Melitta, Juan Valdez/Salton and Hamilton Beach – all made in China.
“Anything made in the USA?” she wryly asks her partner, Lois Maskell.
They return to their New Milford, N.J., home, which is stocked with dozens more Chinese-made items.
These days, such a household is the American norm.
With relentless drive, rock- bottom wages and a government-controlled economy, China has tapped America’s voracious demand for consumer items and created an unprecedented economic tsunami that has swamped – some would say battered – the United States.
The Chinese advances have also raised anew some unsettling questions about free trade, globalization and who wins – and who loses – when a rich country like the United States imports inexpensive foreign- made goods or shifts white-collar jobs to low-wage countries.
Few American consumers would deny the benefits of $1 wooden trains, queen-size comforters that go for $32 or leather handbags for $14.99.
But the bargains have come with high price tags: shuttered American factories, lost manufacturing jobs, a widening trade deficit and a dread of what China’s emergence means for the future.
Economists predict China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy sometime in mid-century.
And some observers wonder how America’s once-indomitable economy will fare then.
The Asian giant has invested so much of its export profits that it is now the second-largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills, the debt sold by the government to raise money.
The speed and force of China’s offensive have stunned U.S. manufacturers.
Since 1996, as the number and diversity of Chinese-made products have mushroomed, American imports from China have quadrupled to $196 billion.
“China has given American consumers the best values they have seen in their lifetime,” said C. Britt Beemer, a South Carolina consumer research consultant.
Yet China also has done more than any other country to strip the “Made in America” label from homegrown products.
That contributed to a loss of 1.5 million U.S. jobs to China from 1989 to 2003, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
What all that means for the United States may depend on where you stand.
Free-trade proponents insist that everyone wins in the long run if countries produce only those goods they make best and trade for other needs.
But critics of free trade say it mostly means lost jobs and shrunken salaries in the United States and exploited workers overseas.
They argue that the more the United States becomes a consumer rather than a producer, the less likely it will be an innovator and competitor.
