On Independence Day, celebrations across the United States depend on China.
The sparklers, bottle rockets and Roman candles you’ll be using this Fourth of July almost certainly came from there. So did the professional-grade pyrotechnics that’ll be launched above the Washington Monument on Friday night.
Continue ReadingIt’s a quirky exception to “Buy American” sentiments that are otherwise going strong and picking up steam in Washington and corporate America, especially around patriotic events.
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After all, Congress passed a law this year requiring flags flown by the U.S. military to be made in America. Ralph Lauren, meanwhile, scrambled ahead of this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi to make sure that Team USA’s uniforms were all manufactured in the United States. And first lady Michelle Obama used U.S.-grown iris and quince blossoms at a state dinner for France in May, departing from the White House’s typical practice of using imported flowers.
But fireworks? No change there. Over the past 35 years, China has grabbed nearly the entire U.S. market — with 98 to 99 percent of what consumers will buy this year being made there, as well as 75 percent of the “display” fireworks, which are used in big, public shows.
Fireworks are a big business, with $675 million in sales just to consumers who will shoot off their own products expected this year, said Julie Heckman, the American Pyrotechnics Association’s executive director. Chinese imports are necessary, she said, because it’s “very, very labor-intensive to make fireworks. Basically everything is still made by hand.”
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Environmental and safety regulations in the United States, she said, would force domestically made versions of the same fireworks to retail for 10 times as much as the Chinese imports, she estimated.
The industry’s shift to Chinese production came about shortly after the United States and China reestablished trade ties in 1979. By the early 1990s, the country was generating more than $60 million in annual sales from pyrotechnic exports to the United States. By 2013, the United States was importing $213 million worth of fireworks — virtually all from China.
The trend won’t be changing anytime soon, fireworks industry experts said.
Thailand accounts for some of the small fraction of fireworks used in the United States that weren’t made in China, as do U.S. companies and European manufacturers of larger pyrotechnics used in professional shows, according to John Rogers, executive director of the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, which conducts safety inspections before fireworks are shipped from China to U.S. buyers.
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In the 1980s and early 1990s, Rogers said, the Chinese imports fell short of U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Department of Transportation safety standards, largely because manufacturers there lacked quality control procedures and “because there was nobody really checking — nobody was monitoring to make sure they were meeting U.S. manufacturing and safety standards.”
The good news, Rogers said, is that the quality of China’s fireworks is improving. Starting in 1994, the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, which counts nearly all major U.S. fireworks importers among its clients, started inspecting tens of thousands of shipments each year before they left China.
The group also imposed its own standards, such as a rule intended to prevent sparklers’ particles from falling onto children’s clothing and starting fires, Rogers said.
U.S. fireworks importers typically make several trips to China each year, and manufacturers there have retooled their production to meet U.S. standards, Heckman said.
She acknowledged that China has earned a “bad rep” over imported tires, agricultural products and more, but said: “In the fireworks industry, it’s very different. The industry has worked hand in hand with China, and many of these relationships go back four, five, six generations, much like the generational family businesses in the United States.”
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