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• Cheap goods from countries like China have an expensive price.
• We have watched the hollowing out of our great American manufacturing base, the outsourcing of production to countries like China and the downward pressure on our wages and living conditions.
• Now our very safety and health is threatened by toxic imports. All kinds of imports are substandard and deadly dangerous – tires, fake drugs and auto parts, contaminated food, pet food and toothpaste, and lead-laden baby bibs.
• Toxic imports, like lead paint in toys, are the rotten fruit of trading with much lesser-developed countries which have no incentive to raise safety, labor or environmental standards. Instead, bad trade deals have lowered U.S. standards and harmed workers and the environment here and in countries like China, where corporations exploit sweatshop conditions.
• Wal-Mart is China’s number one importer. In the past year more than 20 products made in China and sold at Wal-Mart were so dangerous they had to be pulled from Wal-Martʼs shelves.
• Cheap imports should not drive our trade policy any more. We must not throw away our consumer protections for health and safety. And it should not be okay to have imports made with child or slave labor, or that harm the environment simply because they are cheaper to produce.
• We are paying too high a price for cheap imports. The time is now to change course and insist that trade deals bring standards up everywhere for product safety, labor and the environment; not down.

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