In light of increasing reports of drywall from China making a mess of American homes and health, China has decided to blame us for raising a stink – so to speak.   Instead of accepting responsibility for producing drywall containing dangerous substances, it is business as usual for the Chinese government as it disperses its minions to blame the U.S. for its own careless and/or dangerous manufacturing process.   In an initial report several months ago about toxic drywall, I noted that one manufacturer, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin, claimed that their drywall was not substandard -- and they promised never to do it again.  KPT stated it would be changing its drywall manufacturing processes to ensure that even though its product was perfectly safe, it was now going to … well … whatever.   KPT is still one-up on other Chinese manufacturers of bad drywall who have remained silent throughout this kerfuffle, leaving KPT holding the bag, such as it is.    After hurricanes and a housing boom, imports of Chinese drywall to the U.S. grew 65% between 2005 – 2007 -- enough to build about 35,000 homes.  In fact, in 2007 -- second only to Canada -- China exported $1.1 billion of wood construction materials and $245 million of cement to the U.S.  That same year, it exported $313 million of plumbing and heating supplies to us, with only Mexico exporting a bit more.    Even though our housing starts, commercial building, and renovations have dropped over the last year, we are still China’s largest construction materials customer.   Thinking somehow that dodging responsibility for the drywall disaster will ensure continued imports by the U.S., China’s government has claimed that our government is exaggerating the problems with drywall because of “protectionism.”   If protectionism means ensuring that our citizens don’t become ill and our houses don’t rot from the inside out, then we stand proudly guilty as charged.    Xu Luoyi, minion in charge of China’s building material trade association, recently attempted to blame reports of toxic drywall on the U.S. credit crisis -- as well as American drywall manufacturers, implying that they are somehow inventing a problem to keep imports down.    As federal and state agencies flop around trying to figure out what to do, Florida Senator Bill Nelson and Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu have made a good start by proposing the “Drywall Safety Act of 2009” which will both recall and ban defective Chinese drywall.   Homeowners aren’t sure what to do either.  Lawsuits against KPT’s German parent company and some of the other Chinese manufacturers of bad drywall are going forward.   Suing American builders and contractors who had no idea that they were installing a bad product seems counterproductive as they are already struggling with the cost of replacing rotten egg smelling drywall for their customers.    China depends on the U.S., Japan and Europe to purchase huge exports of construction materials.  As building is down in the backyards of all these customers, perhaps it would be a good time for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to hold hands with his counterparts and take a multi-lateral approach against substandard and toxic construction materials from China.    Until China steps up and takes ownership of this problem, I have a simple solution:  anything that looks like Chinese drywall or smells like rotten eggs gets turned away at our ports.  Period.