Free The Betrayal of the American Dream by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele Page B

the $365 billion in merchandise the Chinese shipped to us in 2010.
    Once they leave our ports, our old boxes and paper bags travel six thousand miles to China, where they are recycled into new boxes. These boxes are used to pack products made in China—toys, electronics, computers, clothing, shoes, furniture, tools, and countless other consumer goods that were once made in the United States. Then they’re loaded into containers and shipped back to the United States, mostly to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
    All this activity at our ports creates work. But what kind?
    South Alameda Street in Long Beach is a busy four-lane roadway that slices through a district of warehouses, rail yards, and truck depots about ten minutes north of the port of Long Beach. It is the “Recycling Corridor,” so named for its ragtag collection of businesses that recycle paper and scrap metal, another big export to China. At Corridor Recycling, the gates open at 6:00 AM, and pickup trucks piled high with old boxes begin streaming in. Drivers bring scraps scavenged from just about any place that has old cardboard boxes—shopping centers, supermarkets, retailers. They weigh in at a gatehouse, then dump their old boxes and other scrap paper into a mountain of refuse on the grounds. On a good day, drivers say they can earn as much as $90—not the wages some once enjoyed when they held manufacturing jobs, but “for now,” as one told a Wall Street Journal reporter in 2011, “this is a help.”
    The scrap paper is bundled into bales and packed into containers, then trucked to the port and loaded onto freighters. This creates some jobs for the recyclers, the brokers who arrange shipping, and the crane operators who load the containers. But it doesn’t do much to lower the trade deficit or to provide good-paying jobs.
    But there is a big winner. One company has come to dominate the scrap export market. It ships 225,000 containers of scrap paper from American ports, more than any other company. Its revenues have steadily risen as the demand for American scrap in China has soared. Probably only one person in a million would recognize the company’s name—American Chung Nam—but anonymity suits the company just fine. American Chung Nam is the American branch of the global business empire of a wealthy Chinese investor, Cheung Yan, said to be one of the richest women in China.
    Cheung Yan is worth at least $900 million, and before the global recession she was worth several times that, according to Forbes. She made her fortune largely by cornering the market on scrap-paper exports from the United States. She ships old cardboard boxes and other paper debris to her Chinese company, Nine Dragons Paper, which recycles the trash into boxes that Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and other companies use to ship their Chinese-made products to the United States.
    Founded in 1995, Nine Dragons is one of the largest paperboard producers in the world. Even with the downturn in the world economy, Nine Dragons had record revenues of $2 billion in 2011. The company has four modern plants in China, including one of the largest paper mills in the world—with plans for two more factories either under construction or in the works.
    Cheung Yan’s business is all over the world, but the heart of it remains the old boxes and scrap paper that unemployed Americans and others gather up and deliver to recycling centers in Long Beach and other U.S. cities.
    But surely we export something of more value than scrap?
    Yes indeed. On the list of our top ten exports compiled by the U.S. Commerce Department each year can be found automobiles, pharmaceutical products, and automotive parts. Those three categories accounted for $103.6 billion in exports in 2009. But imports of those same goods were more than double our exports—$209.6 billion. And that’s been happening since the U.S. trade balance dipped into the red. Exports go up, but imports go up even more.
    Which is why