1. Andrew's Canadian underlayment did not come from China. If he bought it
at Rona it is meranti and came from south Asia somewhere. If he bought it
at Home Depot is is virola and came from Brazil. I've used both and nothing
else on all 4 of my small boats with no complaints given the low price and
light weight. I'd rather pay $13 a sheet for underlayment than $50 for
marine and do a bit of maintnenace. If you fill the voids and seal the
edges lauan or meranti lasts reasonably well for a few years without
sheathing in resin-saturated fibreglass, or just coating with resin alone.
If you watn a boat to pass on to your grandchildren, use marine ply.

2. Labour costs in North America and Europe are out of sight and need to
come down. The whole object of the violent union demonstrations at the
Seattle WTO conferene was to try and impose quotas against lower cost
goods from countries where labour costs are lower. The US unions bussed in
thousands of people to throw rocks at police officers. It worked because
Clinton was up for re-election and imposed quotas. Extortionist labour
unions scuttled the WTO negotations and kept people in lower wage countrys
from getting work. North Amercian unions don't give a damn about working
conditions in China. It's just a propaganda ploy to keep wages high in
North America. It's not a matter of wages in other countries going up but
of wages in North Amercia and Europe coming down. We will see unions
fighting dirty so their members can drive around in SUV's and get free CAT
scans whenever they fell like it, but eventually wages will come down,
even if it's just a matter of imporing all goods and leaving the low pay
retail jobs to locals, or the US ecomony will fail. Yes, the unions are
spreading malicious propaganda about "workers rights" overseas and about
job loses at home, because wages have been so good that North Amercian
unions have lost their reason for being and lost so many members they are
at their lowest point in decades. They are trying to scare people to build
up their membership again.

As for China it is going through what Japan went through after WWII when
they started selling cheap goods abroad to test markets. Older
boatbuilders will remember when "made in japan" meant popor quality. No
more. Now "Made in USA" means poor quality compared to "Made in Japan".
Once the Japanese established markets offshore their economy took off for
decades until they let it heat up too much and the rapid rate of growth
eventually leveled off when their economy matured, leaving them with a
mountain of insupporatble debt.

All of which has little to do with boatbuilding outside of the price of
plywood and cheap Pacific knockoff's of popular big boat designs..

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