The 'trade-off' for cheap Chinese products has come at a 'huge ethical cost'

Sky News host Rowan Dean says western nations have operated under a type of “Faustian pact” where there was an unspoken agreement to buy cheap products and “turn a blind eye” to potential ethical concerns connected with the production of said goods.

However, he said the coronavirus has motivated the world to look more closely at “what this deal involves”.

The deal involves everything from the quality of Chinese goods, to the reduced cost of Chinese labour, which “in certain cases could be labelled as slave labour”," he told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

“We’ve accepted that trade-off because we wanted cheap things … and that has come at a huge price”.

“Over the last couple of decades we’ve traded away so much industry, manufacturing and all sorts of skillset which we have allowed to disappear off to China”.

In the wake of China’s “belligerence” over the coronavirus, the western world is suddenly realising “oops maybe that wasn’t such a great deal after all”.

Mr Dean said if the Australian Workers Union are “serious” about returning “heavy manufacturing and heavy carbon intensive industries” to Australian shores, they should “start by pulling out of the Paris agreement”.

“At the moment we get away with exporting it to China and China under the Paris agreement can emit whatever they want in terms of carbon".

Image: Getty

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