re: #289 garhighway

No one is saying the US can’t produce good drywall. Of course we can, and we do every day.

What we couldn’t do was create from whole cloth the capacity to produce additional millions of square feet of drywall on very short notice. I further suspect (but do not know) that the domestic producers did the math and saw that spending a lot of capital to gear up to fill a one or two year demand spike wasn’t worth it. Instead, they ran their plants at full capacity and that was the best they could do.

The importers of the Chinese drywall weren’t bad people. They were simply trying to fill orders the best way they could. Some were even domestic producers who imported some Chinese drywall on the side to fulfill demand.

I don’t think there are any domestic villains here.

But when it comes to China, drywall wasn’t the only inferior product they putting out. That may be a special case, because of the hurricanes (and I won’t feel insulted you didn’t mention S. Florida :>), but check this out. Toys, lamps, heaters, wiring, candles, bike frames, razor blades….

who-sucks.com

2007. I don’t know if things have improved.