China Made 50 Percent of Recalled Goods Last Year

All that matters to the free traders is those cheap products made from repressed labor.

Chinese manufacturers made more than half of the goods that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled last year, but few of them paid any price for producing defective wares.

The long list of faulty products included Chinese-made highchairs whose seat backs failed, steam cleaners that burned their users, bikes whose front-wheel forks broke, saunas that overheated, illuminated exit signs that stopped working when commercial power failed, dune buggies whose seat belts broke on impact and coffee makers that overheated and started fires.

It also included loosely knotted soccer goal nets that entrapped and strangled a child and a toy chest whose poorly supported lid fell on a toddler's neck and killed him, according to CPSC filings.

The difficulty in recovering damages is a lesson that U.S. homeowners who are stuck with defective and possibly toxic Chinese drywall are likely to learn in the coming months. Builders installed the drywall in 2004-5 when the home building boom outstripped U.S. drywall supplies. The CPSC and the Environmental Protection Agency are investigating the consequences.

While everyone involved is likely to be sued — installers, contractors, distributors, importers and Chinese manufacturers — the last are the hardest to reach by far.

For starters, suing a Chinese company in a Chinese court isn't a good idea for most American plaintiffs, said Michael Lyle, a seasoned international lawyer. "It's like suing Michael Jordan in Chicago."

Yet many Chinese manufacturers also evade trial in the U.S. simply by persuading judges that their companies had no substantial business presence in the states in which they've been sued. That's not hard for Chinese manufacturers, which typically rely on independent importers to sell to the American market.