ROBERT L. MARONIC: Caveat Emptor and Car Tires

There is a wise Latin saying or aphorism from the late Middle Ages: caveat emptor . It means let the buyer ( emptor) beware. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary , caveat emptor means “a principle in commerce: without a warranty, the buyer takes the risk.”

In plain words, a little forethought and research before making a purchase can save someone a lot of money and prevent buyer’s remorse, especially when purchasing a house, pre-owned car or any other consumer product.

I presently drive a 1997 BMW 328i convertible, which is a dark metallic green and has a black canvas top. I have owned it since late August 2012, and the car only has 89,250 miles. The Roanoke BMW dealership on Peters Creek Road has assured me that I can easily get 300,000 miles from my “autobahn” engine as long as I change the oil every twelve months and do the necessary maintenance.

Plus, a car this old significantly reduces my property tax.

I recently went to Firestone at Crossroads Mall to price four new all-weather tires (205/60 R15) since my previous ones were all purchased in 2018. The tread on all four tires was good, but there was a small amount of dry rot on some of the sidewalls, which meant that my car could not pass a Virginia state inspection.

Unfortunately, I was told that my 1997 car had very few options for tire replacements because my car is twenty-seven years old. Firestone offered me a deal on four all-season Kumho tires, which were manufactured by a South Korean company according to a helpful sales associate.

However, later that evening I googled Kumho, and discovered that this “South Korean” tire company was a subsidiary of a Communist Chinese company called Doublestar , which was headquartered in the seaport of Qingdao, China in Shandong province. Qingdao, which is located approximately four hundred miles southeast of Beijing on the Yellow Sea in northeastern China is also the corporate headquarters of Hisense and Haier.

Doublestar acquired Kumho in July 2018, and has tire plants in mainland China, South Korea, Vietnam and Macon, Georgia. That clearly means that Kumho has not been a South Korean-owned tire company for the past six years.

When I have to buy something made in Communist China from Walmart, Target, an online retailer or brick-and-mortar store, I always try to keep my dollar amount to a minimum. I have no problems buying manufactured goods from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia, the Philippines, or even Vietnam. Although Vietnam is a communist country, it does not pose a direct military and economic threat to the U S.  Vietnam also sides with the U.S. about China not annexing most of the entire South China Sea with its twenty-seven dredged artificial “islands” as a part of mainland China.

If anyone ever accuses me of being either racist or anti-Asian because I keep my purchasing to a minimum from Communist China, which once happened in 2017, that person is both an intellectual simpleton and woefully ignorant of 20th century East Asian history.

What most Americans do not know, and especially what most American corporations and politicians do not care about , is that the founder of modern Communist China, Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), was the biggest mass murderer in human history.

And unfortunately, there has never been one instance of the Chinese Communist Party ever criticizing or apologizing for their young monstrous founder . In fact, Beijing continues to honor and revere him like the United States honors Abraham Lincoln or Great Britain honors Winston Churchill.

According to the Black Book of Communism , it is estimated from 1949 until Mao’s death in 1976 he was directly responsible for the death of “ 65 million Chinese” in an effort to create a socialist utopia. During the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1961 when he forcibly collectivized all the farms in China, it has been estimated that “30 to 40 million” Chinese were executed, murdered or worked to death.

Frank Dikötter, who wrote Mao’s Great Famine , has written that the death toll during the Great Leap Forward was much higher than described in the Black Book of Communism. He believes that “deaths of up to 45 million people” may have occurred instead of the much lower number of “30 to 40 million.”

Despite Mao’s mass murder and sadistic evil, he is still unbelievably the most venerated person in the People’s Republic of China today. In fact, he is so venerated that his huge portrait still proudly hangs in Tiananmen Square in Beijing while the Chinese people themselves are taught nothing about his brutal crimes, torture and mass murder.

However, Mao is most visibly venerated not in Tiananmen Square but throughout China on its paper currency or the yuan (¥). His elderly picture, which is commonly known in China as “Grandpa Mao,” is depicted on six current Chinese yuan banknotes: 1 Yuan, 5 Yuan, 10 Yuan, 20 Yuan, 50 Yuan, and 100 Yuan .

Not only was Mao the most influential Chinese Communist leader and founder of the People’s Republic of China, but he also has had an enormous influence on China’s second Mao Zedong or Xi Jinping , who has dictatorially ruled China since 2012.

In the last twelve years, Xi has thoroughly crushed democracy in Hong Kong, repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan, continued to Sinicize Tibet, eradicated the Uyghur culture in far west China by sterilization, imprisonment and Sinicization, and greatly increased Sino-Indian tension along the Himalayan border.

Xi has belligerently claimed the South China Sea as an integral part of mainland China, allied his country with such world-class tyrants as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Yahya Sinwar (Hamas), Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah) and Ali Khamenei (Iran). The “second” Mao Zedong has also supplied the chemical precursors for fentanyl for over four years to all the Mexican cartels, which kill approximately 75,000 Americans per year.

Xi Jinping is clearly not to be trusted.

The Chinese dictator was also directly responsible for the massive COVID-19 death toll that originated in Wuhan, China, which resulted in the death of 6,866,733 people worldwide from 2020 to 2023.

Needless to say, I thoroughly despise the Chinese Communist Party headed by Xi or any other Maoist.

I eventually solved my problem in not purchasing Doublestar tires by shopping at Walmart. There I purchased four all-weather Goodyear Touring tires (205/60 R15), which were manufactured in the U.S., and saved $15.

However, two weeks after I purchased these tires, I discovered an amazing website called tirerack.com , which gave me even a greater choice in purchasing higher quality tires in the future not made in Communist China such as Michelin Primacy, General (Continental), Yokohama and many others.

Meanwhile, I am happily driving with four Goodyear Touring tires, but I look forward to the future when I will shop at tirerack.com or elsewhere in 2029 for new more expensive tires, which will have better cornering and easier steering. Hopefully, I shall not forget the wise Latin phrase of caveat emptor when purchasing new car tires or any other consumer products whether made in the U.S. or overseas.

– Robert L. Maronic

Source