The Chinese Puzzle

Hold on to your hats. You will not believe this. Next month, the last of 24 steel modules will be set in place on the eastern section of the new San Francisco Bay Bridge. The bridge is made in China and shipped 6,500 miles to San Francisco in Chinese ships. A $7.2 billion steel contract employing 3,000 Chinese workers.

From iPads to steel, China makes America look like, and I suspect it is now, a second rate manufacturing country. You may remember Oakland, it was the largest ship builder in the world in WW II.  Not any more. Pennsylvania, you may also recall,  was once the steel capital of the world. Remember Bethlehem steel. Of course you don't.

It's a puzzle to me. How can Washington sit idle debating the fine points of a piece of legislation while America's economy is stolen under their noses? In fact, it is not even stolen it is just given away for lack of action. Is this the straw that broke the camel's back? I am not sure.  My observation is simply that our legislators spend hours debating their slice of the American economic pie, which is shrinking as they shirk their obligations to the American people..

No, I do not blame Obama for causing this situation. I blame him for not doing something about it. My guess is that if you could examine the engineers at Zhenhua, the company that received the California contract, you would find they were educated at California universities. Further, you should be aware that Zhenhua is owned by the Chinese government and had never built a bridge before. Despite the fact that California believes they saved several hundred million dollars by having the bridge built in China, it is patently unfair to have US firms compete with the Chinese government for American bridge contracts.

I am sure we have educated them and now China will be exporting steel bridges across America, probably right into the backyard of US Steel. Or are they not in existence anymore? I checked.  They are still around. The company lost money for the last 9 straight quarters, with a market value of $6 billion, which means any Google or Facebook founder could buy them with their personal checkbook. A sad state of affairs for this affair. US steel could have used the business.

We need to Fire Obama and get a CEO who shows some outrage and some action to prevent situations like these.