Please tell me why we import Oak plywood from China!

[volksnut]

Well to make a long story short, I'm remodeling my kitchen and I needed a sheet of Oak plywood to build a pantry, after I got home and ran a few strips through the table saw I noticed a "Made in China" sticker at the end......WHAT THE f**k!  Now I know the reasoning behind this....but why

[stealth67vw]

I know what your saying. 10 years ago we were paying $15 a sheet, now China buys our wood, ships it back to us and now were paying $45 a sheet. Most of our plywood mills here is the Northwest are shut down.

[volksnut]

I get sick and tired of seeing everything...and I mean everything made in China, come on give me a break....but I made a breaking discovery the other day at work....we were leveling street brick and I was using a pick axe to remove the bricks...I looked down at the handle of the axe and proudly it said "Made in the USA"   Kind of made my day

[Iowa Mark]

Several years ago I got a job with a small company that was R&Ding an idea for making doors and windows from urethane foam. They would look, feel, and be stainable, just like oak. The aluminum cladding was cast right into the parts and installation would be like the rest of the industries door and windows. By the time we met the local restrictions for manufacturing using the chemicals and combustibles, the EPA's restrictions as to the use and disposal, the venting and testing, the OSHA requirements as far as safety and training, the insurance company's pages of liabilities and hold harmless clauses, the UL requirements, even the power company's mandate as far as peak hour usage..... Since this was somewhat of a new idea to the "powers that be" they were very careful about approving anything. The guy with the idea ran out of personal funding and had to invite a sugar daddy to buy in. They took the whole thing and sent it overseas where people work for zip and nobody cares what's in the air or water. Most of the days at that job had very little to do with building doors and windows and a great deal to do with filling out someones paperwork. And that is why the kids today come out of school expecting a job behind a desk staring at a computer screen, and not working with their hands, building things. We have done it to ourselves.

[bugninva]

  We have done it to ourselves.

yep....sadly...

[Bruce Tweddle]

, the UL requirements,

This reminds me of a similar conflict my former co had.  They developed a completely new idea for switches to be installed in hazardous environments like petroleum plants or grain elevators.  Currently, electrical switches must be enclosed in explosion proof boxes, and the wires in hard conduit.  Installation is time consuming and expensive.  So our co made switches that used light and optical fiber instead of electricity and wires.  Without electricity you don't need any of that explosion proof boxes or heavy conduit.
The big problem was trying to get approval from UL.  They kept coming back to us telling us they need to be able to measure the electrical leakage, and all sorts of other electrical parameters.  But without electricity, they couldn't figure out how to test it.  They were just too stupid to approve it.  We fought with them for almost a year.