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Buy American?
By John W. Kennedy | April 10, 2008
The spate of news reports about unsafe foreign products, from shrimp to toys, seems to have abated.
I’ve been trying to avoid many overseas products for a variety of reasons, including economic imbalance: it seems as though Americans are sending their entire paychecks over there.
I’m not alone in this feeling. In 2000, two-thirds of Americans believed the United States was the world’s leading economic power, according to a Gallup poll. Now only one-third think so.
It didn’t used to be that way. Not that many years ago, Wal-Mart rolled out a patriotic “Buy American” campaign touting its goods. Of course Wal-Mart and virtually every other mass retailer now imports most products from overseas because that is the way to stay in business.
Retailers, faced with the choice of buying from an American company that must pay its employees generous benefits or from an overseas firm that thrives on cheap labor, will choose the latter to remain competitive. And U.S. consumers willingly comply.
It’s not just discount stores. The other day I went into a hobby craft chain and started examining labels. After discovering that the first 15 products I checked out were manufactured elsewhere I stopped counting. Recently I saw a report that nearly 90 percent of shoes that Americans wear are from Asia. I used to like to buy my wife clothes at a fashionable women’s clothing chain. But now more than half the merchandise originates from Asian nations—and it’s not inexpensive.
I’m no xenophobe. But down the line, when all our jobs have been exported for the sake of low-cost consumer goods, there will be a steeper price to pay.
I had to chuckle during a recent vacation to Sedona, Ariz., a town that so typifies the American Old West that it has been the site of more than 40 Hollywood movies. As I walked around the tourist shops I found it amusing that virtually all the relics being sold—including cowboy hats and cowboy boots—were made outside the United States.
Finally my wife and I came upon a small shop with the curious name “Made in Sedona.” It turned out that the 50-something woman who ran the shop makes all the clothes herself and is open for business six days a week. I had to admire her pluck. We bought several skirts and tops, and left with a guarantee that we could exchange anything that didn’t meet expectations.
Topics: consumerism |