How Important is American Made to you?

I look very hard to find goods made in the US. Since we are a ways out of town I do most of our shopping on Amazon and will gladly pay a little more for Made in the USA although sometimes it's hard to tell.

However, some things should come from other countries; Portugal has always made the best flannel sheets, Italy makes the best Parm and honestly, good china should come from China! Luckily I don't care about good china. I am also OK about made in Canada, sort of feel like they are our siblings.

Am proud to say I haven't been in Walmart in 8 years despite it being the closest store "with everything" to us. I find it very depressing to go in there.

Is USA made important to me? Yes. But I also own a business in an industry where quite literally 90% of the products are made overseas. We do our best to support USA manufacturers over foreign producers, but quite honestly if we only stocked USA born products we wouldn't have anything to stock our shelves with and would go out of business.

For me, I do my best as a consumer and business owner to support USA made. More important to me though is to support the small businesses in my community. Sure, it might cost me an extra few bucks over going to Home Depot, Target or WalMart, but I know those extra dollars are going to cover someone's mortgage, soccer uniform and summer horse camp.

I see this said a lot - I want to argue the other side of that for a minute. If I buy from a small business I am helping pay for mortgage, soccer, camp for a handful of people (business owner, couple of employees). If I buy at Walmart or Home Depot, I am helping pay for mortgage, soccer, camp for hundreds of people employed there. That money doesn't ONLY go into the pocket and yacht of one guy in a far off state. The local economy benefits from their existence both by providing lots of employment and by providing lower priced goods and a lower household budget to help families be able to pay mortgages, soccer, and camp. Not knocking small business, just saying don't knock big business either. They BOTH are a valuable part of our economy. :-)

Like others I choose quality over place of origin. If I can get something local I try to do it, but I have a limit. For example...

Our old washer broke and I needed a new mixing valve. I could get it online in 3 days or locally for $15 more for the exact same part. $25 vs $10 online. I bought it local and told the vendor the price difference was such that he's putting himself out of business.

I never buy food or hygiene items like toothpaste if there is a chance they are from China. Our cat was killed by the tainted IAMS cat food a few years back.

This is true. However a large portion of he profits at big box companies do go elsewhere. And yes, walmart started as a mom and pop shop. My personal drive, because I'd love to employ a thousand people and have a dozen stores myself, is to support other small businesses so that we can grow together.

If all the consumers money stays in the WalMart sporting goods aisle, then I'm dead in the water.

Buying "Made In USA" is important to me.

We also try to buy locally whenever possible.

Corporate American owns this economy, and they have run most of the small businesses out of town. Now that Corporate America owns the economy, they are raising prices and selling only the products they want.

For instance, our town used to have two busy hardware/lumber stores. Lowes came to town, and had their prices so cheap that it was unbelievable. Now that the two local hardware stores are gone, Lowes jacked their prices through the roof. I rarely walk into Lowes these days.

This is absolutely the wrong way of thinking.

Most of the employees of the big stores might be small business owners themselves if the big stores weren't there. In addition, it's well known and documented that the big box stores pay only barely (maybe) a living wage. Their employees are barely making ends meet.

A big store destroys your local economy. Period. There's no way around it. If you pay the Home Depot employees minimum wage then they have to buy minimum wage goods, which forces them back to other big box grocery stores. It's a process that continues to spiral downwards.

Every time I turn on the local radio news I hear some city councilman talking about how they're offering inducements to some big corporation to come into our town and provide jobs. Great! We're going to give them free electricity and water and land for five years in return for 50-80 new minimum wage jobs. At the end of their inducement period, they're going to pack up and go to some other community that offers them a better deal.

Our town is LITTERED with empty and abandoned big box stores that packed up and moved after their "freebies" from the town ended and then they left. I wish I could convince the city council that perhaps bribing big corporations to come here isn't the solution, but rather instead offering inducements to LOCAL businessmen with ties in this community to build and prosper here.

That is exactly what Walmart did as well. We used to have 6 kinds of hot sauces available, once they ran everyone out of business, they only stocked one kind of hot sauce at a ridiculous price from made outside the US. I rarely go to Walmart and it is always a disappointment. One more thing to make from scratch, who has hot peppers to barter--not hot hot, just a bit hot? Like Franks Hot Sauce.

That is a superb attitude and goal to have and a very positive way to state it!

I hope my comment didn't sound like an attack on you. My goal is not to put anyone down, only to help people see there is value in both sides so that we can quit picking each other apart. What I would love to see is small businesses promoting themselves by talking up their strengths - more personalized service for example - or whatever you offer that the big store does not. But instead, what you get most of the time is the tug at the heartstrings about how shopping at a small business is helping a kid get those dance lessons or whatever. That just strikes me as wrong because I know a lot of people who work at a big corp who want their kids to get dance lessons too. It is an attempt to use emotion to win someone over and it is an argument that is intended only to cause division. It isn't intended to showcase your wonderful product or service, it is designed to only make others feel bad about shopping elsewhere.

There is an old proverb used in martial arts called "lengthen your line". The story is told in a million different ways but the gist of it is this. When sizing up yourself against an opponent visualize each ones value as a line, and the the goal is for your line to be longer than the opponents. One way to accomplish that is to try and cut your opponents line down - focusing only on how to make their line shorter. But the better way is to continue to build your strengths, and strengthen your own weaknesses until your line is longer than theirs. To overcome another by bettering yourself, rather than cutting down the other.

Does that make any sense?

I saw this played out in one specific industry in Columbia, South Carolina when we lived there.

A specific road we lived off of had a dozen or more small, independent restaurants. They were outstanding. Great service, great food, great prices. People who knew us by name and greeted us when we came in.

A couple of big businesses came in and located themselves on that road. Now there were a lot of office workers in the area, and here came the chain restaurants. Red Lobster, Outback, and a couple of others.

One by one the small, independent restaurants went out of business. I remember the owner of one restaurant there (a place called the Lighthouse), telling me why she was closing.

"This was our dream," she said. "But they (the chains) make more in a lunch rush than I do all day. Not only do they make more money, but they pull away our customer base. Office people don't get two lunches per day, and so they go where it's cheaper and where they can get in and out quickly. I can't afford to pay a dozen waitresses and five cooks to work only the lunch rush."

When I returned to Columbia for a visit after an absence of about 5 years, there was nothing but chain restaurants there. No uniqueness to it at all. It could have been any street in any city in America.

When we travel we LOOK FOR (and believe me it's not easy) Hometown restaurants, with lots of cars and trucks. Last time we were in NC, SC, and GA, we'd snoop around the main street areas of towns to find non-chain hometown restaurants. The personality and food was fantastic. I hope they can stay in business--or for me, there won't be a point to traveling anymore.I love seeing the culture of the areas and chain restaurants are cookie-cutter and lack the local culture.

Capitalism at its finest.
Sometimes I wonder.

Absolutely. It can easily be said that the "dance lessons and mortgage" call is marketing ploy. When I have a dozen stores and a thousand employees I'll be talking about how many households we support and how many mouths there are to feed.

Our company is specialized. Most small companies are (and those that aren't don't last long). On a consumer level though, not speaking as a business owner, I like to know where my dollar is going. If I know that the small business guy is just trying to support his family, turn a profit and expand his operation, then I am behind that. I know where my money is going because I can see it first hand.

When at BoxStoreX says, "We donated 5% of our profits to your local schools, totalling $1m in 2012" and I know that the bulk of their employees are making minimum wadge (or just over)... well, where did the other $19m go? It isn't going to expanding their offerings, stocking better products or improving our community. There is very little transparency there.

Small business gives the consumer so much more control. You can walk into a small store and if they don't have exactly what you want, they will often special order it for you. Or, will explain to you why they don't stock that product. There are some seriously amazing ad campaigns for terrible products. Unfortunately, those are the products that are carried at large chains because they are cheap, toss away items.

At our shop, for example, we will never say to a customer "They aren't on our approved order list". We'll just tell you what our experience with the product in question has been, and let you decide what you want to spend your money on.

Sorry OP for hijacking your thread - I'm going to get off my soapbox now, I promise.

Such a difficult thing to consider.

As a farmer, my 1970s tractors some actually came from Europe, or at least castings and assemblies did. Is that good or bad? Modern tractors, don't know of any real tractor under 100 hp made in the USA.

If I worked with tools 8-10 hours a day, the good American made brands would be the only thing I would consider. But as a farmer carrying 5-10 tools on each tractor, combine, baler, swather, I could not afford to stock them with Mac or the like tools, and those tools often are only used 2 or 3 times a year, and are probe to getting lost or abused. I really only can afford the cheap stuff for those situations, I would have to do without if I had to pay union prices for those uses?

Couple years ago a county was looking to buy a new road grader, and specified a USA build machine in a fit of patriotic sense.

Turned out, the John Deere grader was mostly off shore parts more so assembled off shore, while the Japaneese company had much more of their machine formed and assembled in the USA. So what to do, support the USA laborers with the foreign name, or support the upper management types with the off-shore made machine?

When I looked for roller chain for my John Deere planter 5 years ago, the boxes at JD said made in China on them.

The entire auto industry is all upside down, the USA companies made poor products decades ago, when they got bailed out or the ecconomy shifted, they couldn't spend their money fast enough at buying into Korean, Mexican, and Chineese factories and companies.... Meanwhile the Japaneese companies keep creating more jobs in the USA by opening more plants in the USA. As do some European auto makers. Who should we support there, the USA companies that can't seem to abandon the USA fast enough, or the foreign companies that appear to offer more and more jobs for USA people?

How about food, we seem to love to import fruits and veggies from other countries, most fish in the USA comes from China, corn and soybeans are a little high priced in the Midwest so the South Eastern states import shiploads of corn and beans from South America...

What to do?

I prefer to support USA workers and jobs, but there does need to be some balance as to wages and prices, blind loyalty seems a little odd too.

Need a balance in life.

Also, if we buy stuff made in China, they can afford to buy stuff from us, and they are doing so. That should be an important consideration as well. If we all cut off buying China made stuff cold turkey (obviously wont happen) would we really end up better off, as they stop buying goods from us that they could no longer afford?

You have a good question, the answer is not so easy if you start looking at the complexity of it.

Paul

All good points--but change will never happen cold turkey. It will happen one person at a time, one family at a time, it will happen one neighborhood at a time, one county at a time, one state at a time (they will statistically 'do well' for themselves), one geographic area at a time (midwest, eastern shores, western states...), and one nation at a time.
There are just as many greedy price hiking foreigners as there are greedy American price hikers--if they can't afford our stuff, and we can't afford their stuff--maybe then the prices won't reflect shipping it to all parts of kingdom come.

Agreed, thats what Capitalism is, using your dollar as your voice. Points have been made on both sides, the large corp vs. the small business man. However personally having worked for a HUGE corp. for over 15years and also having grown up as the son of a small business owner, and now running a small business myself, I can tell you that the large corporations are really for the most part interested in the share holder profits and dividends period. They are willing to do WHATEVER it takes to gain profits. The small business owner is obviously also in it for profit, however I would much rather be able to pick up the phone or go into my local hardware store and talk to the OWNER of the business rather than try to fight through some phone tree only to end up talking with someone that has no real vested interest in the company they are representing other than the next pay check. The small business man usually lives in the area he works and has a vested interest in the well being of his community. It is a symbiotic relationship with the community, not a host vs. virus relationship (for the most part) as most large box companies are.

This thread has kind of morphed into a couple of topics, which are near and dear to my heart and appear to be on peoples minds as well. Thank you all for the frank and open discussion.

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Chad

Owner / Indentured Servant
Red Tractor Ranch

Follow us as we slowly try to bring a little old California Homestead back to life

http://redtractorranch.wordpress.com/

Its kind of ironic that people are calling businessmen and corporations greedy price hikers yet want cheap prices (i.e., Lowes prices through the roof) while wanting businessmen and corporations to pay American workers a good wage and provide benefits.

You cant have it both ways folks and it you look at inflation calculators the price of most durable goods is significantly less today as a share of income than they were a generation or so ago.

Some of us have the means to pay a lot more on principle but in my neck of the woods people dont bash Walmart, they actively seek jobs there and the jobs are basically all that is available for the older or uneducated worker. Even Chinese goods have to be unloaded from the ships, trucked to the distribution centers, trucked to the individual stores, stocked on the shelves, and then a cashier has to sell them. Yup, lets do away with the big box stores....old lady Jones can just suck it up on her $650 SS check each month.

Edited to add: I agree with Chad, its an interesting topic and interesting to see the points of view.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

SalmonMousse
Greedy price hikers--an american one.
On HT last year, a guy comes onto the barter board and wants $8/lb for his honey plus shipping. This is a greedy American price hiker.
I can buy it for $2.25/lb if I ask a local farmer.
I can buy cheap honey substitutes claiming to be 100% honey at the grocery store for $2.00/lb--some (most) of which is just sweetened with corn syrup and other low cost sweeteners.
It's pure foolishness to think someone can ask ANY price and then claim that is the only way to make sure their employees get a fair wage and benefits. You are not going to gain a market share by throwing guilt on people.
It's not all black and white--it's a measure of gray, a balance of good product, good pricing, fair wages and benefits.

For computers, the older IBM thinkpads are good quality, not made in USA unless you go real early, but my Thinkpad X24 was made in Korea [South Korea].

It runs on XP just fine, and is plenty fast enough for this forum.

Plus, the thinkpads are easily repairable. Go to ebay, you can find many good used parts for them.

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We will meet in the golden city, called the New Jerusalem,
All our pain and all our tears will be no more.....

One person at a time, one family at a time,,,,.............one company at a time, Americans will again make computers--there is a business case to be made for this.
Lenovo:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/len...ry?id=19334715