The most widely recognized phrase in the United States right now isn't the Nike slogan, Just Do It, like many people believe; it's "Made in China". This has become a phrase that's common in every household across the U.S. Everything from phones to jeans are now imported from China. This transition to a country that imports more than 20% of its $2.3 trillion worth of imports from China, has happened because many Chinese goods are being sold for the same price or even less than it costs to produce it. This low cost has caused an enormous shift to companies buying Chinese made products. However this low cost is deceiving. The post production costs of these goods are almost never factored in.

Consider safety for example, as recently as 2007 China was importing toys and other products with lead paint. While lead paint has been banned from household paints since 1978 because even a small amount of lead can kill a person, the U.S. was still allowing deadly lead paint into households across the nation. In 2007 however this issue of lead paint made front page news and a recall of over 19 million toys was made.

Another example of safety is with Chinese food. Ontaskva.com gives an example of a popular noodle house in Shanghai. A man saw men coming in with bags one day and when he asked what they were, they replied that they were bags of salt used to make the noodles. The man saw chemical names listed as ingredients and so he wrote them down and went home to investigate what they were. This Chinese noodle house was using road salt used to de-ice roads during snow storms in U.S. cities, not suitable for consumption.

            The post production costs became painfully evident for California when it decided to renovate the San-Francisco Bay Bridge. The state opted for saving money by buying from Chinese steel fabricators. These savings quickly eroded when problems with the steel such as faulty welds by a Chinese steel fabricator caused extremely costly delays. Costly over-runs aren’t the only worry about buying from Chinese steel producers however. In 2011, inferior materials have caused six bridges to collapse in China. This is worrying as the Verazano-Narrows Bridge in New York is going to be renovated using $34 worth of Chinese steel and steel work.