Sunday, January 7th, 2007

Home Depot’s 5/4 x 48 inch stair treads have changed. This wasn’t in the news, but I noticed it.

I used to find their southern yellow pine stair treads to be one of the few useful things in the store. They were single-piece planks of 5/4 inch thickness southern yellow pine. Good wood to make window stools and anything else requiring this thickness of a decent hard wood. Even good for stair treads.

But lately I noticed that the new stock shipments were glued-up grayish treads from China. They are pine, yes, but I don’t know what kind. I don’t know Chinese trees. How can I know its qualities? I could try them but I will not buy one.

This is the worst aspect of globalization. China has enough people to support on its limited carrying capacity without sending their wood to the US. There is no need to send wood around the globe, using fossil fuels while the climate is warming up. (This has been the hottest week EVER in Boston for this same week. It’s early January and I’m wearing short sleeves all day.)

Plus, the reason that glued-up wood can make the market here is low labor costs in China. Labor means people - so the cost of people is lower in China. This inequality, along with leverage of being the giant bully supplier, is what lets WalMart make billions while mom and pop’s who sell US products go out of business. Home Depot is a similar supplier. I am sure they got a sweetheart deal with the stair tread maker.

Recently, I saw some ash hardwood flooring in a Home Depot. I looked closer and the wood seemed just a little different from US ash. I looked at the label and saw “Product of China”.

Don’t we have trees in the US? Don’t we have more acres of trees per person than China? Why can’t we manage our economy and environment and consumption so that we can build our own houses from our own wood?

The US trade deficit is enormous. It’s a boulder suspended over our heads by a small chain, waiting to fall on us. Our corporations are addicted to the enormous profits to be made from outsourcing. It’s only natural, but it’s not healthy or sustainable. The boulder will drop on us sooner or later. China won’t dominate the world by military might, but it is on the road to dominating by economic might.

In the meantime, I will order stair treads through Sterritt Lumber. They cost twice as much, but they’re southern yellow pine from the US. They’re glued up, but they’re glued up by US workers in the same labor market as the buyers. And their 5/4 finished thickness is 1/16th of an inch thicker than the Home Depot variety ever was.

Afterword:

I posted this little essay on ContractorTalk.com and it turned into a huge and interesting discussion among contractors around the continent, at 62 posts last time I checked. See it here.