Amazon has opened an instant portal between our kids and Chinese goods that fail U.S. safety and environmental standards. Today's Wall St. Journal shares that Amazon is helping Chinese sellers upload a new item every 1/50th of a second—resulting in a tsunami of questionable products flooding our homes.
Excessive lead in your kid’s dinner plate? A motorcycle helmet for your son that cracks easily? Get it on Amazon.
One may ask: how could a Chinese-speaking person be expected to know U.S. laws? They can't. Yet, they are selling to the U.S. market--so they ostensibly have to.
Retailers based in the U.S. must adhere to U.S. safety standards and are likely better suited to keeping us safe. A friend shared that U.S.-based stores may sell these same Chinese products, and questioned what the difference was. I believe that U.S.-based stores can be held more accountable for what they sell because they are located here in America. A seller based in China faces few repercussions when it sells bad goods to a U.S.-based customer.
Another concern here surely is the health of U.S. manufacturers and retailers. This portal creates instant access to goods and services that bypass tax-paying businesses that create U.S. jobs.