One mom's fruitless quest to boycott China

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

There’s a package of Hanes boys’ cotton socks on my desk that I ordered online a few weeks ago, but I refuse to give them to my 5-year-old son even though they’d fit him perfectly.

Why? They’re made in China.

Every day we’re inundated with recalls of lead-tainted and other unsafe products from China. A U.S. government Web site offers an alarming list of hazardous toys, almost all of which were made in China — everything from lead-tainted Curious George dolls to exploding remote control planes.

The latest recall news is surreal — toy beads from China coated with a chemical that can turn into a toxic "date-rape" drug when ingested. It’s enough to get any mother’s hair to stand on end.

Recalls like this prompted me to start boycotting China a few months ago. My reasoning was simple: I wanted to protect my family from unsafe products. As an added benefit I thought maybe I could contribute to a renaissance of U.S. manufacturing jobs, decimated by cheap China imports.

I figured shopping online would be my best option, because the megachains are awash with China toys and clothing.  But it turns out that online retailers are not that open with information about country of origin. Many just say “imported,” and I have spent lots of time calling 800 numbers or e-mailing my “Is it made in China?” question to retailers. In most cases so far the answer is yes.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I called Hanes before I ordered the socks off the company’s Web site and a customer service representative assured me the products I chose were not made in China. I went ahead and ordered them.

The package arrived and guess what? The label of the medium-sized boys’ crew socks stated: “Made in China/Hecho en China.”

When I called the customer service line they offered to give me a refund, but I was still steaming mad. Was this just an innocent error or a bait and switch?

I called Hanes to find out. Matthew Hall, a spokesman for the company, said the customer service rep should never have told me with 100 percent certainty that the product I ordered was not made in China. “We have a global supply chain,” he said, and sometimes a product  may end up being outsourced to a contractor in China.

What’s a China-boycotting consumer to do? “The only way to know for sure is when you get the product,” he said.

This is one of a litany of reasons I feel my mission is doomed. I’ve begun to feel like a consumer cornered by Chinese dragon that has engulfed the global marketplace with its hot breath.

OK, maybe I’m a bit melodramatic. But trying to live my life sans China during this time of year in particular is looking pretty insane about now.

First off, about 90 percent of toys in the United States are made China. I realized early on that the big-box toy stores were going to turn up little for me, so I opted to go to small, mom-and- pop retailers. I found a few German puzzles made by Ravensburger, but overall the small stores were little better than the megaretailers. Even the quintessential holiday gift American Girls dolls are made in China!

What has kept me going until now has been the thought that in light of all the recalls, U.S. retailers and producers would start to shift more of their sourcing back home or to other destinations.

No dice. Only 15 percent of the nation’s retailers have any plans to change their supply chains, according to Doug Hart, a partner with consulting firm BDO Seidman’s retail and consumer product practice.

As for U.S. toy companies, “they aren’t leaving China tomorrow. They are well established there,” says John Fontanella, vice president of research for AMR, a market research firm, despite the massive recalls. While he believes India will become a manufacturing powerhouse in the next five years, “the critical mass of products will continue to be made in China for the foreseeable future.”

Even if a product isn’t totally made in China its components might be.

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