I quit watching Shark Tank a long time ago because I got sick of seeing Obama’s face every other
episode but also because they were constantly pushing the use of China factories for cheaper labor.
For those of you who haven’t ever watched it, Shark Tank is a reality show where entrepreneurs pitch
their business ideas to a group of investors.
More than a few times, I watched an entrepreneur come on the show and talk about their products,
their costs and their margins and one of the Sharks would inevitably say something like, “well we can
get that 2¢ cheaper out of China.”
It really left a bad taste in my mouth. I found it not only unpatriotic to American workers, I knew that
China had issues producing safe products.
Just a few years earlier, there was the whole pet food recal [1]l issue when pet food sent from China was
killing thousands of dogs and cats in America. It was a big deal in the animal welfare world and it
really opened our eyes to the amount of pet food and treats that China was making and their lack of
safety standards. We pretty much started our own little “buy American” movement after that to feed
our rescue pets and our own pets at home.
Pet food isn’t the only unsafe thing coming out of China though. They has even admitted that 1/5 of
the soil in China is contaminated. And that was six years ago. It could be worse by now. And yet we
still import food from them.
Everyone has always known that we get a lot of products from China but the real scary stuff we’ve
learned in the past few weeks is how much of our pharmaceuticals comes from China. In fact,
according to a Department of Commerce study, we know that 97% of our antibiotics in the U.S.
comes from China.
Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn is trying to do something about it by pushing
legislation to reduce our dependency on China.
Blackburn told Fox and Friends that her bill, “Securing America’s Medicine Cabinet Act [2]” would
incentivize bringing pharmaceutical production back on the shores of the United States and would
also change FDA legislation to prioritize issues that relate to drug shortages and national security.
It certainly seems like a step in the right direction but I think we can do even more. We need to
manufacture more of everything and not depend on other countries, especially ones that are really
considered our “enemy” in so many different areas.
President Trump has always been ahead of the curve concerning China and how they take
advantage of our country with trade policies and intellectual theft. He’s long accused them of
manipulating their currency to make their exports more globally competitive. Even before he was
president, he talked about them damaging United States businesses and workers.
He tweeted in September of 2011, “China is neither an ally or a friend – they want to beat us and own
our country.”
It’s nice to see that more people are paying attention to that now.