K Street

This article was published by GQ China in June 2012.

To read the full article in Chinese, visit my Flickr site. If I get an English translation, I will post it also.

What if you had to buy American?

This article was originally published by MSN Money on Thursday, May 12, 2011.

It might be supremely patriotic to stop purchasing imports, but the consequences for US consumers and the economy would be devastating.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Legions of patriotic Americans look for "made in USA" stickers before buying products, out of a desire to support the country's economy.

But what if we all were restricted to purchasing only those goods that were made in America?

Our homes would be stripped virtually bare of telephones, televisions, toasters and other electronics, and many of our favorite foods and toys would be gone, too. Say goodbye to your coffee or tea, and forget about slicing bananas into your breakfast cereal -- all three would become prohibitively expensive if we relied on only Hawaii to grow tropical crops.

We'd have to trash our beloved Apple products because the iPod, iPad and MacBook aren't made in the U.S. Gasoline would double or triple in price, given that we now import more than 60% of our oil. And you couldn't propose to your true love with a diamond ring: There are no working diamond mines in the U.S.

Moreover, a complete end to imports would actually hurt the U.S. economy, because consumers and domestic companies would lose access to cheap goods. Trade protections, whether through tariffs or quotas, cost the economy roughly $2 for every $1 in additional profit for domestic producers, said Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

"If we restricted trade to just the 50 states, what would happen immediately -- and would increase over time -- would be a huge reduction in our standard of living, because we wouldn't have access to the cheap goods we get from other countries," Perry said. "We also wouldn't have any export markets, so companies like Caterpillar and Microsoft would have a huge reduction in sales and workforce." (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money.)

Wire Hangers Caught in Twists of Trade Dispute

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2008 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Joe Epstein

In Westfield, N.J., Suho Chae urges customers to return used hangers to his dry cleaning shop. He's paying $50 for a box of 500 pants hangers, up from $24 six months ago. "Every time I order a new supply," Chae said, "the price goes up."

In Leeds, Ala., M&B Hangers, the only major hanger maker left in the U.S., has doubled its work force and still can't keep up with demand.

And in Monticello, Wis., a hanger factory once shuttered because of cheap foreign competition has reopened an about-face worthy of Alice in Wonderland.

Welcome to the latest chapter in the trade tug of war with China: the wire hanger. The twists and turns of this humble piece of steel illustrate how disputes between trade officials thousands of miles apart can ripple through the global economy all the way to your closet.