New Report, ‘Santa’s Sweatshop: Made in D.C. with Bad Trade Policy,’ Documents Root Causes of Imported Toy Crisis
Source: Public Citizen

Although China and inadequate U.S. safety systems are often blamed, U.S. toy corporations’ decisions to shift production to countries without adequate safety systems – and trade policies companies pushed through Congress that limit import safety standards and inspection – are the root causes of the imported toy safety crisis, according to a report released today by Public Citizen. Improving toy safety will require changes to trade policy as well as U.S. product safety policies, the report concludes.
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The report, “Santa’s Sweatshop: Made in D.C. With Bad Trade Policy,” features new analysis of four decades of data on toy imports, production jobs and wages, toy firm profits, CEO pay and toy recalls. The analysis illustrates how the surge in recalls has coincided with the wholesale relocation of toy production offshore as U.S. toy firms have employed a long-term corporate strategy of seeking ever-cheaper wages and raw materials offshore while avoiding oversight and legal liability.

Major U.S. toy firms have cuts costs dramatically by moving production to sweatshop venues where they cannot ensure the safety of products. Toy worker wages in China, where 74 percent of U.S. toy imports are made, are as low as 36 cents an hour – half that of other developing countries and 2.5 percent that of U.S. toy workers.

+ Full Report (PDF; 689 KB)

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Business and economics, China, Globalization, Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.