It is True that Trade Lowers Inflation

The more I think about it, the more I believe that trade helps lower inflation.......of course, I still believe that the most part of inflation has to do with unemployment rate, productivity, and economic growth, but trade definitely got a role.


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PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2007.07.06
PAGE: L2
BYLINE: REBECCA DUBE
SECTION: Globe Life
EDITION: Metro

The no-China syndrome

REBECCA DUBE What would life be like without "Made in China?" Sara Bongiorni decided to answer that question last year, when she and her family resolved to stop buying products manufactured in China.

The answer: harder, and more expensive.

"From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, we are so closely interconnected with the Chinese economy," says Ms. Bongiorni, a business writer in Baton Rouge, La., who chronicles the yearlong experiment in her book A Year Without "Made in China" - to be released on July 15.

Food was the least of her challenges, she says, though the family accidentally bought chocolates, oranges and a box of candy canes from China. She didn't investigate the source of every ingredient: avoiding items marked "Made in China" was challenging enough.

When her four-year-old son needed new shoes, she realized how accustomed she'd become to paying $15 (U.S.) a pair at Payless.

She ended up going online and paying $68 for Italian tennis shoes - buying them two sizes too big so they'd last longer.

The toy aisle at Target inspired at least one breakdown from her long-suffering son, who wailed at one point 10 months in, "It's too long without China!" Permanently banning products from China from your life would require major adjustments, she says: "If you decide you won't buy anything from China, you have basically decided you won't own a telephone." Her year without China was more a social experiment than a political statement. She's gone back to her old buying habits - but with a new perspective on how much North Americans rely on Chinese imports.

"We are so quickly becoming interconnected to places we don't understand that are so far away," Ms. Bongiorni says. "There's just no easy, clear, neat choices you get to make as a consumer in this world."