Like you I too asked myself what can I do to make sure I buy American Made. The first action you can take of course is very easy like looking for the Made in America label on packaging or maybe even assembled in the USA. You do have to search for certain items and of course electronics are near impossible to find that are made here. Beware that some companies will try and trick you by labeling their items designed in the USA or packaged in the USA with a flag to try and lure you to make a purchase. Below I have listed some steps you can take to help spread the word that American Made is important to our economy.
First it is important to understand the many impacts of low cost imports, and why we can’t produce the same low cost items here in the USA. Low cost imports are not all bad in the beginning of course. Low cost imports allow Americans to buy more of the things we want, that’s not bad right? Well in the long run it is because we are losing manufactures here in our own country. As we have lost jobs manufactures here no longer have to compete to hire workers, they can offer the lowest wages possible because there is a surplus of workers.
Let’s address why we can’t make the same low cost items here in the USA. As a society we have decided to create or attempt to create living wages, safe work places, factories that reduce pollution, a forty hour work week, and other regulations and laws. Our country continues to create new laws and regulations to protect workers, protect the planet, increase benefits to workers and this trend may not have an end in sight. My argument is not that these things are bad, they do serve a great purpose and demonstrate we are all in this together and we want a high standard of living for everyone.
Now let’s look at the foreign competitors that our domestic manufactures have to compete with. We have all seen the news reports of the sweat shops producing items that are being sold in the United States. We have all heard how in some countries they literally pay employees pennies, work them in un- safe environments with little to no room for advancement. The foreign manufactures also may have little to no regard for the environment and rather then spend money to clean up their emissions, clean up their waste water etc they simply pollute and pocket the extra money.
How does this affect us you might be asking now? Let’s say one of those foreign factories decided to move to the USA and operate exactly how they operate in their own country and compete directly with our own manufactures. Our government would shut them down immediately and they would have the full force or government agencies coming down on them in full force and probably all the owners would be jailed and sued out of existence
I submit to you this is happening right now except they have not moved in next door. American companies that once made items here moved all their production overseas but still sell all their products here in the USA. It could not have happened without big business leading the way.
We have created an un-level playing field when we set out to protect American Workers. Yes the workers that are still employed have it far better than workers from one hundred years ago or the foreign factories, but there are far fewer workers then there used to be.
I certainly don’t have all the answers and I’m not a protectionist, however I submit to you that we can create a demand for and buy American made items. If we create that demand business will respond and fill that need, that is how free markets work. We have created a section here to find out more about this Domestic made directory here.
We must get America back to full employment to create an environment where employees are rare rather than abundant. When workers are rare employers must pay more to attract and retain employees. Currently employees are numerous and companies can offer the bare minimum and people have no choice but to accept those jobs. Find our more about the benefits of why you should buy American made products.
Speaking from experience I was lucky enough to be a business operator during the Internet boom of the early and mid nineties. Our business could hardly hire workers and were forced to pay more to retain the workers we had. I’m not complaining because business was great, we were selling products and services for great profits and everyone was winning. It was a wonderful time to have a business!
