How important is Made in the USA to you

[Mark Kosmowski]

Regarding the Chinese boycotting - the next time you're out on a road trip, try to find out what the supply chain is for that diner you're having breakfast in.

What does "Made in the USA" even mean anymore? Do the subassemblies need to be made in the US? Raw materials? Or is it just that the corporate officers need to be in the US?

Part of the reason my car is a Toyota is because I felt that my purchase would put more money in the hands of US workers. I don't care where the rich suits live, I want to know where the worker bees live.

[Rich Schneider]

I do consider it when I'm making a purchase...sometimes it is difficult to overcome the price differences (a recent example was when I bought a hot melt glue gun the other day...US made hot melt glue gun is $16.00 whereas the import is under $5.00 for basically the same thing..quality was about the same, features the same, etc)...I bought the US one anyway, debating my choice all the way to the checkout)..the question I always ask myself when confronted with this dilemma is "Who are my customers? Where do they live? Who is most likely to buy my products? Who ultimately pays my bills? Where do they get their income from? Where does the "value added" money go?". The irony of all this is that the US worker is not the only one faced with the stress of "foreign" competition. I was looking at new 8" jointers a while back...what caught my eye was this one very popular manufacturer/importer had two machines with nearly identical specifications, but the two were $300.00 different in price (about 30%). I contacted the company and inquired as to what the difference was and why the price difference? The customer service person told me straight out that the units were basically the same, but the higher priced one was made in Taiwan, whereas the cheaper one was made in China..they were in the process of switching their product lines from Taiwanese manufactures to Chinese manufactures due to cost competition.....

[Michael Gibbons]

I don't think that the U.S. public had anything to say about the whole deal. The big companies were looking for ways to make more profit which just happened to involve moving production to other countries where labor cost were much lower. The consumer still needed the products so we didn't have anything to say except "How Much"? Once we became accustomed to paying less, the downfall of American industies were inevitable and it just snowballed from there. I really can't think of anything we need from any other country that we can't make here or have made here at one time or another.

[Mike Minto]

not very important to me. tired of being used, lied to and overcharged by businesses, american included. mike

[Greg Peterson]

It's a moot point. Consumers have little control or power of influence on the retail side. More than enough people shop at Walmart to effectively cancel out any Buy American drive. The die is cast and overcoming the inertia of the marketplace is unlikely.

Investors, that would be you, me and any body else that has stocks (401k....) have far more control over how these corporations operate than consumers do. Don't like the profits your stock generates by a company that is manufacturing overseas? Pull your shares.

We got just exactly what we asked for deserve. Low prices.

When there is a reasonably priced choice, I will buy American made.

We as a nation are really not all the interested in keeping our dollars close to home. At least not enough of us.

[Denny Rice]

I agree with Ken, USA use to be synomous with quality. Not so anymore. I simply look for the best I can justify and buy it, doesn't matter where it is made although with all else equal or close I will go with us made. Most of my shop is not US made We simply are not as innovative as some other countries, it is to hard to protect what you make we have laws but it slows things down and production cost is high (probably due to the exchange for years but that may change now).

I have to disagree with you Jason, America is probably the MOST innovative country on this planet. I will say America has allowed itself to lower its standard of living today vs 50 yrs ago due to the stagnet wages employeers pay American workers adjusted with inflation compared to 30 to 50 yrs ago. NAFTA has killed our economy, we need to make China play on a leveling playing field if they want to do business with the USA. American companies need to realise that shareholders are not the only concern they have, they need to care for their workers as much. Americans use to buy TV's that lasted 20 years and could be fixed, now you keep it for a couple of years and throw it away, a good example of this is an Asian built USA named vacuum cleaner purchased by my wife last year, a switch was broken on this unit, we tried to get a replacement switch (2.00 part) but the company has discontinued any parts for this model. We just purchased a new vacuum cleaner made in the USA with a 10 yr warranty. AS far as American laws that slow things down here in America thank God I don't live in China with all that smog and polluion in the air (the Olympics are a good example) on an average day you cannot even see the birdsnest due to their lack of pollution control laws.

[glenn bradley]

Consumers demand quality at a low price. American workers demand higher wages and more benefits. Do the math. We can sometimes be our own worst enemy. I treasure my quality America made tools and products. Few of them were made in the last 30 years or so unfortunately. We still turn out some great stuff. A lot of it isn't carried at Wal-Mart or Costco. I seek them out when I can.

Given a choice I would buy American. Given a choice I buy from merchants in my community . . and so on.

[steve reeves]

Labor costs, compliance costs (the vast miriad of federal and state regulations) taxes and greed (on both sided) have driven these jobs overseas in the beginning.

In the beginning it was american owned companies building plants on foreign soil... these goods were still of good quality and allowed the companies to keeps prices low while at the same time increasing profits which of course keeps the shareholders and the upper tiers of management happy as their huge bonuses and stock options kept flowing.

Then some of these countries saw that they were getting their workforces basically trained for free... the governements and or entrepreneurs within those countries started opening their own factories or increasing their productivity and quality within their own factories in order to keep the back side profits within their own borders.

We gave them the opening by opening the doors as result of many international trade agreements. These agreements were all driven by big business interests in their search for more profits.

Labor has and had it's own contribution. Unions demanding ever higher wages and benefits programs for what was and is essentially nothing more than general labor. The corporations caved into these demands time after time and were eventually forced to move jobs elsewhere. It's still happening everyday around the country. The local bottling company here just finished a protracted strike.... when it was all over and done the guys went back to work minus their company paid retirement program and a 3% raise... I don't begrudge anyone for making every penny they can make but 20 bucks an hour to load and unload trucks? What ended that strike was the company started hiring replacement workers the day the strike started at $10 an hour.... I don't care how long you've been loading trucks, if it's a $10 an hour job then it is what it is.

I know those guys have families to feed, cars to pay for, mortgages etc. but we've become a society that thinks flipping burgers should come with the ability to make new car payments and pay the mortgage on a $200,000 house....

On the other hand, companies have gone much to far in distancing themsleves from their employees. Most employers simply don't give a damn about you so long as you're there on time and assemble the correct number of widgets during your shift or load x number of trucks etc.

The disconnect between the worker bees and the suits has never been larger and continues to get worse.

One huge difference between the US and most of the rest of the world is executive compensation... while the worker bees are lucky to get 3-4% raises the upper tier of management are demanding and getting 10-25% pay raises not including the "incentives" and perks that are already rediculous.

European and asian managers make no where near what their american counterparts do... not even close. Further, they generally work longer hours and are held to tighter standards.

So in my opinion greed on both sides was the harbinger of these issues developing and politics gave them the avenue.

We've become a "me" society that demands instant gratification... instant fixes.. yet we created the problems that need fixing right here.

[John Schreiber]

We've become a "me" society that demands instant gratification... instant fixes.. yet we created the problems that need fixing right here.

The problem is well stated.

Solutions? (I don't have them either.)

[Neal Clayton]

how important? not at all.

i prefer european/japanese to american even.

[Darryl Hazen]

FWIW, I like to buy old American iron, but it's typically hard to come by in my area. I'd have to drive to California.

All that "old American Iron" from scrapped autos made in the USA gets shipped to Japan and comes back here as Toyotas, Nissans & Hondas.

[John Schreiber]

All that "old American Iron" from scrapped autos made in the USA gets shipped to Japan and comes back here as Toyotas, Nissans & Hondas.

I wish. More of it goes to China and never comes back.

[Jim Becker]

All that "old American Iron" from scrapped autos made in the USA gets shipped to Japan and comes back here as Toyotas, Nissans & Hondas.

They probably don't need to ship it...all three manufacture in the US at this point...much of their lines, at least.