

Bridge Comes to San Francisco With a Made-in-China Label - signa11
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

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I went to visit the Golden Gate Bridge[0] for the first time a year ago.
Standing in Marin county, overlooking the Golden Gate, there is a nice little
park with a number of plaques rattling off various tidbits of information. Two
items struck me in particular. One, the Golden Gate took four years to
complete. And the other, the Golden Gate was completed underbudget. Now, cast
your gaze a touch behind and you see the utter failure of the new Bay Bridge.
A bridge that is overdue and over budget - and made in China to boot. And
this, my friends, is why America is going out of business. When we can not
even manufacture the ingredients in our national infrastructure projects it is
an absolute shame and travesty.

Here are some choice quotes from the article:

    
    
      “I don’t think the U.S. fabrication industry could put a project like this together,” Brian A. Petersen, project director for the American Bridge/Fluor Enterprises joint venture, said in a telephone interview. “Most U.S. companies don’t have these types of warehouses, equipment or the cash flow. The Chinese load the ships, and it’s their ships that deliver to our piers.”
    

And

    
    
      ... they note that with the full financial force of the Chinese government behind its infrastructure companies, the monumental scale of the work, and the prices bid, are hard for private industry elsewhere to beat.
    
    

Basically we can not even build these projects anymore. And why? Because the
Chinese government, with the help of our enfeebled government, has eroded our
capability to do so. The Chinese unfairly financially back bids for projects
against private firms. Chinese firms get financing directly from the
government at favorable rates that allow them to submit bids that private
firms can not match.

I ask you this, if we had to win the next World War, where would the
manufacturing for our Liberty Ships and B17's[2] come from? I, for one, do not
welcome our Chinese overlords and hope we in America wise up before the final
nail is in the coffin.

[0]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Bridge>

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ships>

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Flying_Fortress>

