A Gift We Couldn't Refuse

Over the past several years, northern Virginia has played an unwelcome host to a small ugly critter affectionately named the stinkbug. They have expanded into many states since they were brought into Pennsylvania in a shipping container in 2003 where it appears that they were included as a free sample from China.

It's been rumored that China's party leaders were upset at all the publicity the Japanese were getting for their beetles, and that they wanted their share of the U.S. Market for obnoxious bugs.

A few years ago the Japanese had most of the market share in our backyard, but this year the Chinese bug has just about wiped out any competition. My guess is that WalMart has rolled back their prices considerably on this Chinese product.

They are actually a very clever little import. Since they have no natural predators, they multiply rapidly and then attack a lot of crops but they particularly love sucking the juice out of apples. Apple juice used be one of the major agricultural products here in northern Virginia until the Chinese pretty much wiped out the business with cheap juice imports a half dozen years ago.

You have to give it to the Chinese, this was a very clever way to get rid of the rest of the competition, especially since they did it with a bug that emits a foul odor when it is scared or squashed. Sort of the ultimate example of "screw you, stronger message later."

This morning I read that our local milk producers are worried because their cows are being fed corn infested with these bugs and they may start producing milk that smells like stinky feet.

When I read that article, besides putting my bowl of Cheerios aside, and then running to another bowl where I made gagging noises for a while, I started seriously thinking about what we could provide back to China as a free gift in one of our shipping containers.

Considering the imbalance of trade, my guess is that we have about two billion of their containers coming in to this country and just one or two of ours going out each year, so it has to be something that that is pretty potent and smells bad.

I'm pretty much through the list of the members of congress and Senators, and there are more than enough candidates on both sides of the aisle for the next few years of shipments, especially since a few of them will be looking for work after November.