Sticking It to China: American Factory Exporting Chopsticks You-Know-Where

Carrying coals to Newcastle. Remember that hoary industrial age idiom signifying pointless economic activity?

Ok, might have been before your time - or your dad's. Whatever. The point was that taking coal to a place that was famous for producing it didnt make a lot of sense.

Initial reactions to reading that a US factory in rural Georgia is manufacturing and shipping chopsticks to China sounds like it might be some sort of post-industrial joke. But it may actually signify that an important economic tipping point has been reached. China, for all its achievements as the behemoth astride the industrial and technological globe has a few issues. These are primarily that most of the cheap labor to be gotten there has been found and put to work; and that it is hoovering up raw materials like a recovered bulimic at a hot-dog eating contest.

The US, meanwhile, though still adrift and glowering with resentment at the loss of its economic preeminence has a couple of things China could use: an underemployed but trained and educated work force and huge amounts of various raw materials. These materials include a lot of cheap 'trash' wood located in places with underemployed farmers like, you got it, rural Georgia.

This space has written about The Great Post World War II Rebalancing to which the US is still reacting. Former competitors have been back on their feet for a generation or more and new competitors are coming into their own. It was only natural that the US would suffer some disequilibrium as it adjusted. But these cycles are speedier due to technology and global communications. It may just be that rather than serving as a punchline, sending chopsticks to China is a metaphor for the next wave of rebalancing which may signify a US recovery. JL

The Economist reports:

ASK someone to write down all the differences between China and rural Georgia and his hand will fall off before he’s halfway done. So let us restrict ourselves to the vista: cranes, skyscrapers, spanking new rail networks and smog: China. Barbecue restaurants, red clay and trees: Georgia. And whereas most rural Georgians are surviving quite well, thank you, without skyscrapers and subways, Chinese diners, who go through billions of disposable wooden chopsticks each year, could use a few more trees.
Enter Georgia Chopsticks. Jae Lee, a former scrap-metal exporter, saw an opportunity and began turning out chopsticks for the Chinese market late last year. He and his co-owner, David Hughes, make their chopsticks from poplar and sweet-gum trees, which have the requisite flexibility and toughness, and are abundant throughout Georgia.

In May Georgia Chopsticks moved to larger premises in Americus, a location that offered room to grow, inexpensive facilities and a willing workforce. Sumter County, of which Americus is the seat, has an unemployment rate of more than 12%. Georgia Chopsticks now employs 81 people turning out 2m chopsticks a day. By year’s end Mr Lee and Mr Hughes hope to increase their workforce to 150, and dream of building a “manufacturing incubator” to help foreign firms take advantage of Georgia’s workforce and raw materials.

But that is some way off. For now Messrs Lee and Hughes, and their workers, keep busy shearing, steaming, shaving, cutting and drying huge logs into rough chopsticks. They still need to be finished—to eat with a pair of Georgia Chopsticks right off the Americus line you would need tweezers in your other hand and a high pain tolerance. For that they are shipped via the Port of Savannah to China (later this year they will start sending them to Korea and Japan) in boxes with a rare and prestigious stamp: Made in the USA.