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More than 40% of recalls by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, including all the toys recalled this year and 79% of toys last year, involved products from China. The volume of consumer goods from China has nearly tripled since 1997, but the agency's budget has increased just 12%, to $62 million, over the past five years. "There's no question it's strapped," says Eric Rubel, a former general counsel to the commission...
...containing diethylene glycol (the ingredient had been mislabeled as glycerin, which is harmless), the FDA issued an import alert on all toothpaste made in China, tested the tubes it could find for the toxin and recalled the questionable batches. "Obviously it's not possible for us to test every product that is coming in to make sure it's meeting every standard we have," Acheson says. "It's got to be based on risk...
Doing that, of course, would require improving China's food and product safety at the source. "We'd rather have the products manufactured safely in the first place," says acting Consumer Product Safety Commission chairman Nancy Nord. Despite our buying power, the U.S. government simply has very little leverage to impose new restrictions on Chinese goods, in part because it is lobbying China to open up its markets to U.S. goods. "This can't be the Federal Government's responsibility," says Pietra Rivoli, a professor at Georgetown's business school and author of the book The Travels...
...requires them, in writing, to meet Nike's standards, says spokesman Alan Marks. When the company recently decided to reduce its environmental impact by using a water-based adhesive in its shoes, Nike added layers of checks to make sure its contractors followed the new specs. Nike's product specialists developed a list of banned substances; there is systematic monitoring in the factory and quality control of the finished products. In some industries, like electronics, manufacturers pay outside-testing outfits such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to fill that role. UL has been testing products like extension cords from Chinese companies...
...answer to the tort lawyers. In many states, every link in the chain that brings an unreasonably dangerous product to the U.S. is potentially liable for the damage it causes. "It's not a defense to say, I was just a distributor," says Jonathan Bunge, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago. Foreign Tire Sales, the company that imported the recalled tires from Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, is named in a lawsuit over a fatal crash involving the tires...