A new report called ‘Santa’s Sweatshop,’ released locally by the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, argues that the massive relocation of toy production from the United States to countries with weaker consumer safety enforcement is an underlying cause of the recent surge in dangerous toy recalls.
The Public Citizen report features new analysis of over four decades of data on toy imports, production jobs and safety recalls, and concludes that changes are needed to both consumer protection standards and international trade policy in order to improve toy safety.
“The massive recalls we keep hearing of, that are bringing so much anxiety this holiday season are not a random act of coincidences,” said Alicia Ranney, director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. “They are the expected result of our manufacturing industry being outsourced to countries that don’t have the most basic consumer protection standards that Americans deem critical.
“As we’ve seen with the thousands of manufacturing jobs lost in Minnesota since NAFTA was passed, these trade deals mean more than trade,” said Ranney. “The trade rules benefit the bottom line of large corporations but in turn they harm our working people, family farms, the environment and unchecked imports threaten the safety and health of our children and families.”
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