Should Builders Be Concerned With the Recent Recalls of Chinese Products?Buyer Beware?

Continued from page 4

Carliner says the Chinese are still learning how to accommodate American standards, and eventually the two countries could see eye to eye on quality-control issues.

Fowler agrees. "U.S. labor practices 75 years ago weren't different from today's labor practices in China," he says. "We developed our health and safety practices over time as they became issues to us. In the same regard, we can hope that China will do the same thing."

In the meantime, says Fowler, builders looking for a deal will continue to look to China. "It's a bottom-line issue for home builders and large developers," he says.

Without a crisis of their own, builders will be hard-pressed to pull their orders for Chinese-made materials. "Unless there was an immediate reason, it would take a very long time to see any significant changes in the sourcing of building materials based upon the current consumer issues in China," says Barry Rutenberg, president of Barry Rutenberg Homes in Gainesville, Fla., and chairman of an NAHB subcommittee on building materials.

For now, some builders are taking note of the "Made in China" stamp on the products they buy from their local building materials dealers, which some dealers and industry experts estimate as high as 10 percent of the inventory. But the Chinese-made products—both with American and Chinese brand names—are still selling steadily. "I am personally factoring it in, but it hasn't changed any of my decisions," says Rutenberg, who notes that more building products "than I thought" are made in China. "I'm becoming more sensitive to my country of origin than I was; I'm watching it more." BUILDING PRODUCTS

Know Your Knock Offs

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates that $60 billion worth of counterfeit goods—from CDs to cigarettes to medicine—head for the United States from China every year.

Among them are an increasing number of electrical products, including circuit breakers, power strips, extension cords, and wall outlets. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled at least 1 million electrical products over the past few years.

"From the simple standpoint of numbers, I'd say it's getting worse," says Travis Johnson, associate counsel for the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition in Washington, D.C. "And it's getting extremely difficult to tell" the real deal from the fakes.

If the price is right and you don't have a moral issue with buying products whose makers stole intellectual property, does it matter if you buy a counterfeit product?

If it's electric, you bet it does.