The Alliance for Main Street Fairness, which includes retailers such as Target, J.C. Penney, Walmart and Best Buy, have produced an ad warning that Alibaba, a Chinese company similar to Amazon and eBay, threatens small American businesses. Though Amazon and eBay are these retailers’ real competitors, they chose to target a Chinese company as the face of the “enemy” in gaining public support for Congress to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) and Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC) contacted the Alliance for Main Street Fairness and asked them to pull the ad.
“This type of advocacy preys on American fears of ‘foreign invasion’ and crosses the line,” said Mee Moua, president and executive director of AAJC. “These retailers deliberately chose to target a Chinese company as the ‘face’ of the competitor or challenger, rather than another American company. In doing so, they are feeding into anti-immigrant and anti-foreign sentiments. The ad revives the ‘Yellow Peril’ scare tactic that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and later, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. We demand that the Alliance for Main Street Fairness abandon this marketing campaign and pull this ad.”
AAJC and the MMTC will be launching a social media campaign targeting @StandWithMainSt and the Alliance for Main Street Fairness demanding the alliance #PullAlibabaAd.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice is a national nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. working to fight for civil and human rights and empower Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to participate in our democracy.
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council is a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries. (end)
So, I used to be ‘friends’ with Stand With Main Street until they blocked me for making one comment that went against the grain. This story popped up in my feed and it reminded me how anti-Asian (mostly anti-Chinese) Stand With Main St. is. One comment after another disparaging Asians to try to push their agenda. It’s pretty disgusting. Anyway, as a business owner, I love China and all the people of Asia. They have buying power and are often excited to support businesses and products they love. That’s true for all areas of the world, but I find the Asian markets to be even more exciting, especially w/ the growth of Vietnam.
I don’t understand why some groups want to deny Asians the right to do business and be successful entrepreneurs in America. (Like those at “Stand With Main St” and so many other Marketplace Fairness proponents.) Entrepreneurship is great in the hands of people with free markets. Capitalism provides freedoms for all.
Our govt does not need to pick winners and losers, they just need to be concerned about getting in the way of American business owners. The Marketplace Fairness Act does not level the playing field. It picks winners and losers and creates costly compliance for American companies with makes it harder to provide a competitive price vs foreign competitors.
Lets let all business battle on price, quality and service. Let customers choose winners and losers, not heavy hands in govt. MFA get out of our way!
Best option for researching MFA: emainstreet.org/videos
I don’t understand why some groups want to deny Asians the right to do business and be successful entrepreneurs in America. (Like those at “Stand With Main St” and so many other Marketplace Fairness proponents.) Entrepreneurship is great in the hands of people with free markets. Capitalism provides freedoms for all.
Our govt does not need to pick winners and losers, they just need to be concerned about getting in the way of American business owners. The Marketplace Fairness Act does not level the playing field. It picks winners and losers and creates costly compliance for American companies with makes it harder to provide a competitive price vs foreign competitors.
Lets let all business battle on price, quality and service. Let customers choose winners and losers, not heavy hands in govt. MFA get out of our way!
First of all, good for Chinese companies and people for being capitalists and doing what they can to grow their wealth and influence and opportunity. Second, shame on American legislators for helping Chinese companies do this when it’s their job to help American companies. The MFA provides foreign favors where it forces costly compliance on American biz, especially our small businesses online. I highly recommend a video series on the Marketplace Fairness Act produced by a nonprofit group eMainStreet Alliance. Go to emainstreet.org/videos/
Why do I recommend this? Because I help write it. I did research for many weeks to do so. I was on the fence about MFA before my research. Now I believe it (and the Remote Transaction Parity Act–which may be its new name in 2015) is a very crushing bill that will really hurt small business, and overtime give Alibaba and friends around the world a leg-up on American competition.