Buying "Made In USA" only

It's tough to do even with a conscious effort. I enjoy shopping at a certain big box store because they give priority to American made products. One woman even wrote a book about how difficult it was to accomplish over one year (A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiorni).

I saw this story in the news today- hopefully it will start a trend:
Smithsonian shop sells U.S.-made gifts
*** The Price of Freedom gift shop at the National Museum of American History began selling only American-made gifts Wednesday. The change came after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., threatened to introduce legislation requiring taxpayer-financed museums to sell more merchandise made in this country....Sanders said that the move is a good start, but that he wants to see a greater effort to sell American-made merchandise in all Smithsonian gift stores. "It seems to me that a museum owned by the American people, designed to express our history and our greatness, should be, to as great a degree as possible, selling products made by American workers," said Sanders, who visited the gift shop Wednesday....The Smithsonian wants to see how well merchandise sells at the Price of Freedom store before committing to extending the American-made policy to other stores, Haberacker said. ***
Story: http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus...smithsonian-buy-american-products-gifts_n.htm

Would you pay a few bucks more for an American made product? Does better quality matter to you? Do you support this store's new policy?

That's pretty good. I have no problem paying a little more for better quality in most cases.

this subject hits close to work for me. My job is to buy a product that is relied upon by construction workers as a tool. I buy a limited amount of USA made product but the cost is extremely prohibitive at the moment. When everyone gets a look at the increases in cost coming out of china in the next 3-6 months, i suspect it may drastically close the gap in the average consumers mind. Get ready to open your wallets folks, cause china has a taste and a demand for westernized living conditions resulting in dramatically increased wages in factories.

It's a gimmick, and another stunt by Sanders.

mondeo said:

It's a gimmick, and another stunt by Sanders.

Click to expand...

Yep, maybe, yet a move in the right direction.

legalskier said:

Would you pay a few bucks more for an American made product? Does better quality matter to you?

Click to expand...

I am usually looking for the best product for the money. I am also not looking to pay extra just to fund some guys pension and lifetime benefits....

Like TV's or computers, would you or better yet, could we afford to buy an American made one?

The price of American-made is often more expensive, she said. Coffee mugs made overseas average $10 to $12 apiece; American-made ones retail for $20.

Click to expand...

The problem with this sort of protectionism hurts people when they can least afford it. Maybe the well to do will be happy to buy products twice as expensive because they are made in the USA (just like the well to do are more likely to buy "green" products regardless of the price penalty). But less well to do folks get hurt. People don't buy Chinese merchandise because they want to, they buy it because that is what they can afford. If consumers were forced (on a grand scale) to buy American or go without, the economy would collapse.

It is counter intuitive to an extent. I was a HUGE Bernie supporter when I was in Vermont. And I was crazy go nuts for this type of thing at one point. But if you dabble in a little economics, you find that forcing people to do stuff like this causes problems. One small specialty niche shop ain't going to hurt anything (will it be profitable, though, I'd like to know that....). So they can have at it. But the whole "Be American, Buy American" concept is ridiculous. The fact is that a massive amount of the USA economy and jobs we work is supported by trade with China and USA consumption of foreign goods.

riverc0il said:

The problem with this sort of protectionism hurts people when they can least afford it. Maybe the well to do will be happy to buy products twice as expensive because they are made in the USA (just like the well to do are more likely to buy "green" products regardless of the price penalty). But less well to do folks get hurt. People don't buy Chinese merchandise because they want to, they buy it because that is what they can afford. If consumers were forced (on a grand scale) to buy American or go without, the economy would collapse.

It is counter intuitive to an extent. I was a HUGE Bernie supporter when I was in Vermont. And I was crazy go nuts for this type of thing at one point. But if you dabble in a little economics, you find that forcing people to do stuff like this causes problems. One small specialty niche shop ain't going to hurt anything (will it be profitable, though, I'd like to know that....). So they can have at it. But the whole "Be American, Buy American" concept is ridiculous. The fact is that a massive amount of the USA economy and jobs we work is supported by trade with China and USA consumption of foreign goods.

Click to expand...

So he says as he watches his job being outsourced to India. Sorry Steve, strongly disagree. Granted, protectionism is a bad thing and I truly believe in free trade and competition. But we need more of a level playing field. How can factory workers in the US possibly compete with workers in China who make a couple of hundred dollars a month. How can IT workers here compete with IT workers in Singapore or India who make $10-$12 a month? In the end if this trend continues, Americans will be put out of work, as is happening. Middle class will disappear and with that will the number 1 consumer, this happens, who purchases the inexpensive products? Surely not the poor guy in China making $200 a month. We get to this point, what happens to the world economy?

I try to get the most for my money, if that means made in the USA, fine. To me it's more important to buy locally no matter where the product is made. I like my little town and will support it whenever I can.

andyzee said:

Surely not the poor guy in China making $200 a month. We get to this point, what happens to the world economy?

Click to expand...

Actually, yes. As China catches up to the rest of the developed countries of the world, their products will begin to get more expensive which will level the playing field and they'll want goods and services produced by the USA.

The fact is that a significant amount of jobs that get outsourced are jobs that few people want. Minimum wage jobs that require skills but a repetitive and boring.

As far as middle class being put out of work.... there are more jobs now than there were prior to trade with China. The reason the economy sucks right now is due to the financial meltdown and the fact that people stopped buying so much crap (perhaps a good thing, let's get back to sustainable growth). Trade with other countries increases domestic jobs, not decreases.

The middle class having problems right now is not due to trade with other countries. Should we not trade with Japan? Or how about Korea? We get almost all of our electronics from over there. A significant amount of our vehicles too. Hyundai has one of the cheapest and most reliable new cars on the market. Laptops now cost 300% less than a Desktop running Win3.1 over a dozen years ago. Some jobs get outsourced but others are created, but perhaps your industry was hit harder than most. It ain't the 1990s for IT any more but it is that way for healthcare.

There are a lot of factors and saying something so broad as outsourcing is killing the middle class is just not accurate.

The IT industry was CRUSHED in places..
I lost a job to India when I worked at AT&T...

In the company I work for now.. We have a ton of folks in India doing offshore work... BUT - we are moving lot's of work to Malaysia now.. Cause it's cheaper...

It's too late for manufacturing in the USA. American owned companies are the next things to go. From what i'm told American Engineering sucks anyway.

Interesting that Bernie thinks buying Chinese coffee mugs is bad, yet he has taken bus loads of Vermont Senior Citizens across the boarder to buy cheaper prescription drugs in Canada.

legalskier said:

Would you pay a few bucks more for an American made product? Does better quality matter to you? Do you support this store's new policy?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that the second question is necessarily assumed after the first question.

The days of "Made In The USA" being the automatically synonymous with superior quality are behind us. An examination of the US automobile industry is offered as exhibit #1.

We as a nation point out that our inability to compete in manufacturing is a function of us not taking advantage of cheap labor or questionable human rights as is seen in many of the Asian (and probably soon, African and South American) countries. In the same breath though, we advocate the abolition of labor unions that have been formed to look out for the well-being of American workers and to assure that our workers get a fair paycheck for a day's work.

SkiFanE said:

I love yardsales. Most 'green' thing to do, reuse. Plus you get cool vintage stuff (ie early 1960s framed Tahoe map tourist poster). Don't buy from China or US..but grandma lol.

Click to expand...

Yardsales are actually where you find the most things made in the USA. Old stuff that was built to last and that grandma took care of.

Industries that get sent overseas are replaced by others. i.e. TV's replaced by computers. The bigger question is what is going to be the next boom for us. I do not see anything on the horizon that is jumping out at me.

Steve, you bring up some very good points, can't say I agree with them all, but none the less, very good points that have forced me to think (That in itself is a job)

riverc0il said:

Actually, yes. As China catches up to the rest of the developed countries of the world, their products will begin to get more expensive which will level the playing field and they'll want goods and services produced by the USA.

Click to expand...

Would agree with this if American businesses weren't closing up due to manufacturing being shipped overseas. By the time they catch up I'm not sure what will be left here. Maybe they'll want good and services same as us, from countries that are cheaper.

riverc0il said:

The fact is that a significant amount of jobs that get outsourced are jobs that few people want. Minimum wage jobs that require skills but a repetitive and boring.

Click to expand...

Sorry Steve, but think you have your facts wrong, Boring minimum wage jobs are not being outsourced, they have been and are being moved to other countries, there's a difference. I used to think the same way, let them have the crap, until I did start seeing the higher skilled jobs being outsourced, companies turning global and then even upper management being moved to foriegn countries. Shameful thing about this, some of these companies got bailed out by the U.S. government in the recent fiscal crisis.

riverc0il said:

As far as middle class being put out of work.... there are more jobs now than there were prior to trade with China. The reason the economy sucks right now is due to the financial meltdown and the fact that people stopped buying so much crap (perhaps a good thing, let's get back to sustainable growth). Trade with other countries increases domestic jobs, not decreases.

The middle class having problems right now is not due to trade with other countries. Should we not trade with Japan? Or how about Korea? We get almost all of our electronics from over there. A significant amount of our vehicles too. Hyundai has one of the cheapest and most reliable new cars on the market. Laptops now cost 300% less than a Desktop running Win3.1 over a dozen years ago. Some jobs get outsourced but others are created, but perhaps your industry was hit harder than most. It ain't the 1990s for IT any more but it is that way for healthcare.

There are a lot of factors and saying something so broad as outsourcing is killing the middle class is just not accurate.

Click to expand...

You bring up very interesting poiints about Japan and Korea, and that one really got be thinking (my head is starting to hurt now) However, with Japan and Korea, this country was in a much better fiscal position and we were able to absorb the punch a bit better. Right now financially we are in a much more fragile state. But let's forget us for a sec, the U.S. is the world's #1 consumer, what happens if we can't consume anymore? What happens to the world economy? Yes, my points as well as yours may be a bit simplistic, but I think in both cases some very valid point and we both need to look at each side of the argument.

SkiFanE said:

I'm looking for new ski clothing, and comments and research say that once a manufacturer moves operations to China, quality goes down (ie Cloudveil and another I read about...Mammut?). I know price doesn't go down. This goes against what you said. Hmmm..

Click to expand...

Might consider that the manufacturer has opted to use lesser quality "ingredients" for their product so that 1) it costs less to produce, but selling price stays the same, and 2) the sooner the product is not functioning to expectation, the sooner is the opportunity to sell you another one.

My new drumset is 100% made in the USA... South Carolina...

Puck it said:

Industries that get sent overseas are replaced by others. i.e. TV's replaced by computers. The bigger question is what is going to be the next boom for us. I do not see anything on the horizon that is jumping out at me.

Click to expand...

I would think green energy technology.