A report is out that U.S. officials have told a small New Jersey importer to recall 450,000 radial tires for pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans after the company disclosed that its Chinese manufacturer had stopped including a safety feature that prevented the tires from separating.

Tread separation is the same defect that led to the recall of millions of Firestone tires in 2000.
At the time, tire failure was linked to an increased risk of rollover of light trucks and SUV's.

The company, Foreign Tire Sales of Union, New Jersey, had originally sought the U.S. government's help with a recall, saying it did not have enough money to recall all the tires itself.

The defective tires join a growing list of problematic products with origins in China. A huge recall of potentially tainted pet food in March was followed by widespread reports of toothpaste manufactured with a toxic chemical and toys coated with lead paint.

In October 2005, the company said it became concerned because of a sharp increase in customer complaints about the Hangzhou Zhongce radial tires. In investigating the complaints, Foreign Tire Sales' officials became suspicious that Hangzhou Zhongce was manufacturing the tires without the gum strips or with inadequate gum strips, but the Chinese company denied it.

Hangzhou Zhongce admitted in September 2006 that it had "unilaterally decided to omit the gum strips" in the tires, the report says. The Chinese company was "generally unresponsive" when asked how many tires were involved and what they were going to do to resolve the problem.

Why do we even buy Chinese products when they are poorly made or defective? By the time you factor in how quickly the product fails, the initial low cost doesn't seem to be much of a bargain. But luckily, by giving China its huge trade surplus we can support slave labor, several new Chinese millionaires who will gamble in Macau at Steve Wynn's casino, and China's ability to now fire missiles into space and knock out satellites as shown when China did just that on January 11, 2007, blasting an old weather satellite to bits.