Why do we trade?

China launches probe into imports of US chicken

BEIJING — China on Sunday started investigating complaints that American chicken products are being dumped in China and are unfairly benefiting from subsidies, adding to a string of trade disputes with Washington.

Well, obviously, the USA is dumping chicken feet into the Chinese market at below cost. That's because American consumers don't put much value into chicken feet while Chinese consumers do. Thus USA chicken farmers have an abundance of chicken feet that they used to throw away (or make into hot dogs) and now they get shipped to China as a delicacy.

But Chinese chicken farmers had been selling chicken feet as a delicacy for years at higher prices, and must be upset that the prices is now going down with a flood of US imports.

You'd think the Chinese would figure out that you could substitute "abundance of cheap labor" for "unwanted chicken feet" and decide discretion is the better part of valor/creating an economy based on exporting manufactured goods.

On a more interesting note, I wonder if China now consumes more chicken feet than chicken bodies?

Maybe there are ghost chickens roaming the Tyson plants in Arkansas that can never go to heaven because their feet are in China?*

allusion to Chinese eunuchs keeping their penis' in a jar, much as a married man lets his wife keep his....