Regardless of your opinion on immigration and the border fence, this one is guaranteed to raise your blood pressure…  Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using Chinese-made steel poles in the construction of a security fence on the southern U.S. border.

Congressmen from both parties have lodged strong protest against the use of taxpayer funds to purchase this Chinese steel.  Rep. Jason Altmire, a Pennsylvania Democrat and member of the Congressional Steel Caucus, called the purchase of Chinese steel “outrageous,” and California Republican Duncan Hunter noted that U.S. pipe makers could “easily” provide the steel needed for fence construction. 

It’s very unfortunate that a U.S. government agency would accept cheap, illegally subsidized bids from a competing country over the bids of the nation’s own steel producers—the very workers and producers who are paying for the steel in the first place.  U.S. tax dollars should not subsidize Chinese jobs. 

One might even go a step further and question whether the Chinese-supplied steel meets the requisite safety and structural integrity requirements that are expected of American-made steel.  As ABC News revealed in August, some shipments of Chinese-made commercial steel have been coated with cheap, lead-based paint—a practice that U.S. producers would strictly avoid.

The sort of brain-dead mentality that would enable DHS to accept Chinese steel is symptomatic of the disregard our government has for U.S. manufacturing jobs.  As AAM keeps saying in our Town Hall meetings, voters need to demand more from their candidates and ask what they’ll do to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.
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This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., National Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.