I have no idea whatsoever what part pollution regulations or labor laws or quality control laws specifivally play into this situation with vitamisn C,

My concern is more general, i.e. that we should pay more attention to how we play in the global market. The first step is to acknowledge when the impact is negative. The second is to look for ways to prevent the US from sliding downwars
to the lowest denominator.
It will take a lot of analysis and a lot of public awareness to pressure the powers that be.

It isn’t only China that is causing the trouble, of course, You are quite right about US companies going for the easy moncy, instead of investing in newer technologies. The trouble is that it isn’t only CEOs who drive this phenomenon. It’s the investors and consumers. We don’t care about long term effects as long as we can pay a penny less for our vitamin C while seening the value of our investments rise by the same amount.

When the question of labeling down to the ingredient level was raised, a sea of company spikesmen and lobbyists descended on Washington and cable news stations to argue against it.

Somehow, the public needs to be reeducated to see further than the ends of their noses. They could then have different expectations from the providers of good, and by extension, from the government.

But I think that the key, bottom-line, end of the day issue is that domestic companies need to do much, much more due diligence when dealing with overseas vendors. There is no international civil code. Consumer recourse is solely to the domestic suppliers not to the overseas companies (unless they want to try to prosecute their claims in, for example, China’s courts).

Part of the answer, I think, may be that the domestic producers were using the old Reichstein method for industrial production of Vitamin C while the Chinese producers were using the newer two-step fermentation method developed by the Chinese 40 years ago. If that’s the case why didn’t the domestic producers convert to the new method?

I wonder if too many U. S. companies are unwilling to change and do the capital investment required to compete in selling low margin commodities. They’re looking for the big score, trying to win the lottery. That would seem to be particularly true as large, publicly-held companies gobble up smaller privately-held companies. Just speculation on my part but it rings true to me.

Globalization is here. The tiger can not be put back in its cage. It’s also true, that over the course of a very long time, it may be possible that the kinks can be worked out, so that this huge process can work more smoothly and equitably.

We are not there yet, however, and the kinks need much more serious attention than they’re getting.

Adding human rights and quality control clauses to trade agreements with China is only a tiny tiny step.
These clauses have no effective enforcement mechanism. Laws and regulations in China are all written by the central government, but the central government can’t oversee compliance to any great degree. At the local, provincial level, where regulations have to be implemented, officials and all arms of the government are notoriously corrupt and notoriously difficult for the central government to oversee. The rare and spectacular hanging of an official is only a small dent, ans its symbolic value is too prone to be overwhelmed by the power of greed.
Meanwhile, US inspectors have no access and can do what they can only after the fact.

Since markets are inherently based on competitive greed, It’s to be expected that China would do what it can to tip the scalws in its own favor. It’s high time we stopped being naive and paid more attention to the many problems that need solving.

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The only real solutions I see to this are strict standards for companies that import and favoritism for our own companies. Give benefits to those who buy from our own people, and forbid the import of products from certain companies, not just on the basis of product quality, but also on how they treat workers. If China is forced by the world to give western treatment to their workers, their monopoly would be much harder to hold. We’d be doing those workers a favor in the meantime too.