Schumer Wants More Scrutiny of Imports

Schumer Wants More Scrutiny of Imports
Senator Calls for New Federal Regulator, Citing Recent Recalls of Chinese-Made Goods

By Xiyun Yang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 2, 2007; A05

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called yesterday for the creation of a federal import czar, blaming problems with the safety and quality of Chinese imports on unexacting inspections and a bureaucratic morass.

"Neither the Chinese or American government is doing their job," he said in a telephone interview. He criticized the Bush administration for cutting funds that regulatory agencies need to carry out proper inspections.

Chinese imports have been the subject of a flurry of consumer recalls in recent months. In April, tainted ingredients from China resulted in the largest pet food recall in U.S. history, and 1.5 million Chinese-made toys were recalled when lead was discovered in the paint. More than two dozen Chinese-made toothpaste brands laced with a poisonous chemical have been banned by the Food and Drug Administration. The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration is advising a recall of up to 450,000 tires made by one of the largest Chinese tire manufacturers. Last week, the FDA banned five types of Chinese seafood.

"The Chinese system of regulations is where we were in 1890," Schumer said, adding that rigorous inspections at the U.S. border must make up for any weakness in foreign regulations.

Housed under the Commerce Department, an import czar would oversee inspections and all other aspects of import consumer safety, Schumer said. The czar would also issue public reports on problems U.S. agencies encounter in monitoring imports.

Current regulations spread the policing of imports and recalls among many agencies, including the FDA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.

FDA documents illustrate the size of the task facing inspectors and the limits on their effectiveness. Budget cuts have reduced the number of inspectors at ports of entry, who are able to inspect less than 1 percent of imports. Yet the agency refused 298 food shipments from China in the first four months of 2007, compared with 56 shipments rejected from Canada. FDA records also indicate that Chinese imports are often returned to manufacturers, who try to re-export the goods to the United States.

But analysts warn that regulatory changes could choke U.S. access to the Chinese market. U.S. reliance on Chinese-made food and manufactured goods has risen to the point where the U.S. trade deficit with China was at $232 billion last year. New regulations would also be difficult to implement, analysts say, because that reliance now extends not only to finished goods such as tires but also to food ingredients and additives. China produces 80 percent of the world's ascorbic acid, also known as Vitamin C and used as a common preservative in processed foods.

Though the Chinese government has responded with indignation to the bans by the FDA, it also acknowledges that the problems are systemic. China has shut down 180 food plants, citing safety and health violations.

"These are not isolated cases," Han Yi, an official with China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said at a news conference last week, according to state media reports. While government officials have called the seafood ban "unacceptable," they concede that measures have been taken to remedy the situation, according to a statement on the agency's Web site.