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Unfortunately all too true.
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obermd wrote: Drywall
Can't be terribly cost-efficient to buy your drywall and have it shipped all the way from China...
Unless, I suppose, it's your local stores that is buying it in huge quantities and it ends up on their shelves.
And then I suppose the same argument can be made about the other items you mentioned. In which case you have to let the store's owner know you're buying elsewhere.
Oh, all the local stores are getting their supplies from China?
Then that's self-inflicted and has been in the works for decades. The mom-and-pop shops that have all disappeared, because they can't compete, did send plenty of warnings...
And now this is getting close to political (too late?), so I'll shut up now. 
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Chinese Drywall: What It Is, Why It’s Bad and How to Avoid It[^]
Quote: A significant portion of drywall used in America is manufactured in China, where manufacturing costs are low and raw materials are plentiful
We import practically everything from China, why not Drywall?
I'm sure people have done the math and it's just too damn expensive to make it anywhere else, including the U.S.
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I do a lot of wood working and use Baltic Birch Plywood 13 cores and you can drive screws into the end grain without splitting the wood. I have broken some wood screws from Home Depot and ruined a $50.00 piece of wood.
So I went over to German technology sourced out of an Ohio company.
FYI Construction Fasteners Supplier & Manufacturer | SPAX U.S.[^]
Where it is made makes a BIG difference
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Let's buy some Saudi oil instead 
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Got my vote!
Will Rogers never met me.
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I always thought it was interesting that China in general (Shanghai, etc.) is used as a backdrop for a lot of cyberpunk novels and movies.
Must be that amazing high-quality steel they produce.  j/k
modified 7-Jun-23 16:20pm.
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I doubt that the bolt in question was made of steel, even a low grade steel. It was more likely made of zinc.
The bolts you can buy in home depot or lowes are all zinc. None of them are steel. The only brick and mortar place I know of to get steel fasteners is the auto parts store.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I stand corrected. Shows what I know about bolts.
Either way, these are junk. I've had better luck with stuff sourced stateside at places like Ace. I never had problems with the bolts i used to replace the head bolts in my two stroke, but then i also brought in a bolt and told them what it was used for.
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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Are you sure they are zinc? You have actual evidence? After a career in engineering I've never heard of zinc being used for anything other than an anti-corrosive coating for fasteners. Zinc has very little structural strength which would render it useless for bolts.
When you see "Zinc bolt" advertised, drill down into the detail and you will find they are steel with a zinc coating.
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Maybe you're right. I do know that in Home Depot and Lowes, the labels on the shelves say that the bolts are zinc. Maybe that means steel with a zinc coating.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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You need to stop thinking it's because it's "Chinese Steel". This is MAGA nonsense. All steel worldwide is made in different grades having different physical properties, American steel as well, at different price points of course. Blame the manufacturers of your chair for choosing cheap fixings. Or buy better chairs!
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There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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haughtonomous wrote: This is MAGA nonsense.
No politics in the Lounge, please.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The difficulties are related to understanding why "Buy American!" is non-politics and fully acceptable in the Lounge while "'Buy American! is nonsense" is politics and banned from the Lounge.
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Because all natural languages lend themselves completely to hypocrisy, falsehoods, etc.
Otherwise they could be used as programming languages.
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I have to agree with tronderen. The sentence was not out of the scope of all other messages.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nor was mine.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The really worrying part is that the Chinese steel is used in aircraft replacement parts.
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So you think it worrying that Chinese industry is capable of delivering high quality?
You are right, in a sense. While everyone buying cheap Chinese crap because it is cheap (in both money and quality), Chinese industry is capable of creating really high quality products "behind our backs", because most of us turn their back to them.
China is selling us Cheap Crap because we want to buy Cheap Crap (they even have a 'CC' symbol for it  ). Thinking that the Chinese industry is capable of nothing but Cheap Crap may be the most fatal misjudgement of this century.
You get what you pay for. If you pay for high Japanese quality, you get it. If you pay for high American quality, you get it. If you pay for high Chinese quality, you get it.
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You are 100% correct. My primary job now is to purchase a myriad of industrial goods and chemicals from China. You certainly get what you pay for, no matter the source.
I don't speak Idiot - please talk slowly and clearly
"I have sexdaily. I mean dyslexia. Fcuk!"
Driven to the arms of Heineken by the wife
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Why do we buy Chinese at all? Because it is cheap. Around here (i.e. Norway), that is the one primary reason for buying Chinese. It could have been made at a comparable price here, and then the quality would be comparable, too.
But then: When I was a boy, i.e. in the 1960s, we were really mocking Japanese products very much the same way as we mock Chinese products today. They were selling millions by millions of cheap transistor radios (we still had mostly tube designs in those days), cameras in a plastic housing, cars that were referred to as 'rice cookers'. We mocked and ridiculed the Japs for at least ten years after Nikon and Canon (and a few more) had taken over the high end camera marked, after the rice cookers had proved to be the most reliable cars around, and high class stereo systems affordable by everyone were 95% Japanese.
The Chinese are most definitely making high quality products. They don't need us to buy them - the national market is five times the size of the US of A, and there is a huge Asian market outside China. We may be making a fatal mistake by telling China "Send us the very cheapest products you are able to produce!" and believing that what we then receive is representative for what Chinese industry is capable of producing.
I guess comparing Chinese to Western industry today is very much like comparing Japanese industry to Western industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In a few sectors, we have already realized that China has taken over the lead, and we might see more of that as long as we keep on saying "But it is cheaper buying from China than to keep our own industry alive".
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I don't disagree with any of this. If anything I'm lamenting the insistence of US manufacturers on using low grade Chinese material to the exclusion of anything else, to where you can't find quality at any price. I go buy a nicer chair, they'll still use bolts like this. It's frustrating.
And I use Chinese products every day for work. Certain things are great to buy from China, but they don't seem to export quality metal. They could I'm sure, if they wanted to, but as you say, there isn't really a market for it in the west.
It's a mess.
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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Curvaceously ran online? (9)
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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