"That damn banana smell just threw me all off," an angry writer named Soulsistah wrote at allhiphop.com, an urban news site. "The size of the thing was definitely way off and it broke within minutes."
The cigarettes, dash valves and condoms were defective for the same reason: they were fake. And they are only a few of the record number of counterfeit products on the U.S. market that endanger unwitting consumers.
"Counterfeiting is a rapidly growing problem," said Rob Calia, director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Center. "More and more products are being copied that pose significant risks to consumers, often that they don't know are fake and dangerous."
Fakes always cost companies dollars, but today consumers may be paying with their health from a rash of lesser known and potentially dangerous items like counterfeit Lipitor, diabetic test strips and power cords.
Indeed, counterfeiting is big money.
Coupled with piracy, it costs the U.S. economy between $200 billion and $250 billion per year, according to the Chamber. Counterfeiting and piracy also are directly responsible for the loss of more than 750,000 American jobs, it says.
Worse, some of the profits from counterfeit sales may have gone to fund terror. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was partly financed through the sale of fake clothes like Nike t-shirts and an Al-Qaeda training manual recommended the sale of fake goods as a financing source, according to Interpol, the international police force.
Like cigarettes, counterfeit automotive parts are on the U.S. market in record numbers. They include brake linings made of compressed grass, sawdust or cardboard that wear out quickly; spark plugs that overheat and can lead to fires; and gas caps that can leak after rollover accidents.
The value of auto components seized by customs officials was $845,094, but that's only a fraction of the fakes that make it onto shelves and into cars and trucks. Between 2001 and 2006, General Motors alone conducted 1,000 investigations and seized $44 million in counterfeit auto parts. Despite their efforts, millions of knockoff components enter the country each year, according to the industry, costing it $12 billion annually. MUCH MORE
To say or infer that China is undermining our economy and National Security would be a gross understatement. China's response to charges of supplying our military with fake parts was disingenuous at best, and pure political rhetoric and defense of their stranglehold on manufacturing, however they did shed light on exactly why we are experiencing these problems, and until the United States brings the bulk of our manufacturing back into the Continental United States, it will get worse, not better:
However, Song Xiaojun, a former Peoples' Liberation Army officer who has become a nationalistic commentator in the Chinese media said the US had "got itself into the position it is in".
"The US has been dismantling its factories since the 1960s," he said. "And since the Clinton government, the US has turned a blind eye towards military requisitioning. As it keeps cutting its procurement budget, weapons dealers will keep providing cheaper quality products," he added. "This attack on China is political, given the forthcoming elections. But it should not be blaming China, this is a free market issue. The only solution the US has is to buy its components from Korea or Japan instead, but then its costs will rise a hundredfold." LINK
How safe do Americans feel knowing that millions of fake parts from China are installed in key military components, some of our Big Rigs that traverse American roads, and brake pads that are made out of grass or cardboard are installed on how many U.S. automobiles? As Senator Carl Levin stated in regard the military's issue with sub-standard and fake parts, this is "just the tip of the iceberg." We agree that this issue is far from being exposed in its entirety and question where more counterfeit parts and control systems are installed in critical U.S. infrastructure such as Nuclear Power Plants, our electric grid, radar systems, delicate medical equipment and a host of other critical systems that we as Americans reply upon on a daily basis. Are you willing to stake your life on sub-standard parts being bought from China?
And then, as we examine the Solyndra Bankruptcy, in addition to all of the above, how much is it costing the American economy to continue doing business with China? How much will it cost the military to find and replace millions of fake parts in our aircraft, ships, and missile systems? How much is it costing American businesses via counterfeiting and fake parts that Corporate America is purchasing in their unmitigated greed and need to strengthen their bottom line while endangering the National Security of this nation as well as the health and welfare of our entire citizenry? This is not a new issue facing the American public. We warned that outsourcing our manufacturing to China would eventually collapse our economy and pose a grave threat to our national security as far back as 2004 and nobody listened" We then published that "China Poses A Clear And Present Danger To U.S. National Security" in February of 2010, way before these additional facts were publicized by The Telegraph and other Alternative News sources; that an issue of this magnitude would arise between the United States and China was obvious to anyone that understood the severe risk to our National Security via outsourcing critical segments of our manufacturing, and now our prediction(s) have become fact, and we take no joy in being correct -- only sad and disgusted that a mere layman in economics and national security could effectively predict what Corporate America and Washington have so far refused to properly address.
Ah, but I digress; Let's examine an article posted by RAW Story that delves into the Solyndra Bankruptcy which was directly caused by China. Solyndra has not been the only U.S. Company to fail because of China's undervalued currency and slave labor rates that target American industry, constantly underselling their products to cause financial distress and insolvency within our nation:
China "deeply concerned' over U.S. solar rulingBy Agence France-Presse
Sunday, December 4, 2011(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
