Originally posted by Prakticant Why do you buy from China, and not from Poland (EU) then?
Is there only a greed?
I'm not sure I quite understand the question... but here's a recap of what's happened in the US over the last century:
1. Most goods sold in the US used to be made here in the US. Also internationally, the US used to be dominant in some areas, like the textile industry in the 1800s and the tool and die industry up until the 1960s.
2. Mergers and acquisitions, trade agreements, cheaper labor overseas, improving technology overseas, and inexpensive international shipping all contributed to an erosion of domestically produced goods and the original companies and jobs that were responsible for them.
3. Goods sold in the US are mostly now typically made in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Mexico, and a few other places. Basically wherever labor is least expensive and a certain quality level can be achieved (as determined by the typically multi-national parent company).
In the US, certain shipping agreements have been made, such as "ePacket" for Chinese sellers selling goods on eBay to the US market, which gives them preferential shipping pricing and a direct link into the USPS from China:
USPS Gives eBay China Sellers Competitive Advantage
The economics of shipping goods from around the world cheaply rely on massive container ships which burn "bunker fuel", the lowest grade, bottom of the barrel petroleum left over from the refining process. Bunker fuel is solid at room temperature, so the container ships have additional means of heating the bunker fuel up so that it becomes liquid and can then be burned. Burning bunker fuel produces a lot of pollution, but since there are no environmental laws for international waters for the type of fuel burned, there are no legal repercussions, however at port cities where the container ships dock have very high rates of asthma, lung cancer, and other respiratory problems (that includes ports in the US).
There has been fostered a culture of apathy in the United States where the general populace has become complacent purchasing inexpensive goods at cheap prices, while domestic goods production has been moved overseas. There is a feedback loop in place where eliminating well-paying domestic jobs has eroded the middle class, incomes and buying ability of a significant portion of the US population has increased the appetite for cheap goods, which has accelerated the problem. It's unclear to me what the pain point will be when most people will be unhappy enough with the lack of a middle class and quality jobs for general unrest to occur.
And back to your question, the typical US consumer isn't paying a lot of attention to where goods are coming from, just how inexpensive they are. If Poland produced less expensive goods, US consumers would buy them, but a large portion of this situation is chicken-and-egg, where the pre-existing sheer volume of goods production in China and other places is already high enough to simplify production, agreements, assure shipping volumes and keep prices down (though the rising standard of living in China along with increasing domestic unrest at the levels of pollution there are making it more expensive to make goods in China, which has and will lead to goods production being moved elsewhere).