The Buzz

The Chinese have nearly cornered the wire coat-hanger market in the United States.

So what? you say.

You’ll know “what” when your dry-cleaning bill soars a whopping 2 percent.

Cheap Chinese coat-hangers have swamped the U.S. market over the last five years and now only one U.S. coat-hanger maker remains, says Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute CEO Bill Fisher.

So the U.S. government is imposing tariffs of up to 200 percent on hanger imports.

“We are going to charge the Chinese, which will cause our costs to go up even more. What’s wrong with this picture?” asks Harriet Collier, owner of Hart’s Laundry & Dry Cleaning in Lexington.

But if you want to worry about something, Collier advises that it be gasoline prices, not Chinese coat hangers.

“The cost (of dry-cleaning) is not going to be driven up much by hangers,” she says. “It could be driven up a whole lot quicker by gasoline.”

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under International trade. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.