Posted on 02/08/2005 9:08:32 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Check the label on your Nikes, your Apple computers, your UCLA sweaters. Made in China, assembled in Korea, hecho en Mexico. It may seem like just one pair of shoes, one computer and one sweater, until you multiply it by every one you've ever bought.
Now look around. Try and find one thing in Ackerman Union made in America. Ask students on campus where their goods are made. Getting the picture? Here's a frame – America's unprecedented $600 billion trade deficit.
Should you be scared? Should you feel like a traitor to your nation? After Google-ing my fingers to the bone and having heated pressroom debates with my editor, intense discussions with a very patient UCLA senior economist and many futile phone calls to the White House, the answer is yes. And no.
Reasons to be scared: With every purchase of a Nike shoe or UCLA hat made in China, we increase our national trade deficit and, by extension, the grip foreign countries have on our economy. A sizable chunk of our trade deficit is comprised of imported American products made in foreign countries. Except American companies don't have to pay import tariffs because the products are "American."
This is called vertical disintegration, or "outsourcing." Shipping jobs abroad expands foreign economies while shrinking ours. We "invest" abroad by buying goods not made here, then slap familiar brand-name labels on them. Look at your designer UCLA hat and fashionable Nikes and see the hands of underpaid Chinese laborers at the sweatshop end of a dime-on-the-dollar global assembly line.
If that's true, how can our economy be growing? Don't we outpace every other economy on the planet? The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank that is also the head cheerleader for privatizing Social Security, is more than happy to forecast blue skies. According to the institute, the supposed crisis is actually a sign of prosperity.
"There is no emergency. The trade deficit is not a sign of economic distress but of rising domestic demand and investment," testified Cato policy wonk Daniel Griswold to the Senate Finance Committee.
In other words, as goes the conservative fairy-tale argument, we have more money to spend than other countries; that's why we buy more of their goods than they do ours.
Now check your wallet (the one probably made in China). Witness the source of our prosperity. It gleams divine when hit by sunlight. Over 641 million credit cards are encased in the wallets of American consumers – the backbone of our economy – who, through $2 trillion of debt, fuel the "domestic demand and investment."
It's plastic, it's magical, it's your credit card. Buying things you don't need with money you don't have – the contemporary American passport to the heaven's gate of "prosperity."
But this prosperity offers some reasons to feel like a traitor. Vladimir Lenin, the architect of applied socialism, famously said that a capitalist would sell rope to his own hangman. Now we are actually buying the rope.
"The reality is, our current trade policies are not working. The middle class is shrinking. Poverty is growing. Average Americans are working longer hours for low wages, and our disastrous trade policy is one of the factors," said Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., in a recent FOX News interview. "We're getting killed. And we're selling out the middle class of this country."
But if this is actually a crisis – one perhaps more immediate than the Social Security crisis looming 40 years from now – why isn't our president out there Bible-thumping on the bully pulpit for Americans to buy American, for Christ's sake?
"I don't know. If I were sinister or conspiratorial, I'd say it's because of those contributors telling him to maintain the status quo so they can continue to keep outsourcing," said UCLA Anderson Forecast senior economist Michael Bazdarich. "Why don't you call him and find out?"
I did. Guess what – the White House did not return my phone calls. Again.
Under current trade policies, an "hourglass" economy has developed. In 2003 alone, 4.3 million people, some from the middle class, have fallen below the official poverty line, creating a grand total of 35.9 million. At the same time, the main beneficiaries of the current "jobless recovery" have been corporations, taking 47 percent of the income increase in the last two years, as opposed to the 15 percent that trickled down to salaries.
The biggest irony might be that we are killing ourselves without knowing it. Bazdarich suggests that Americans are unique for their unpatriotic preference to buy "fashionable" foreign goods such as BMWs rather than all-American Fords.
But how many of us are actually conscious of that attitude? Even products made by American companies are manufactured abroad. Try to go into Ackerman and buy something you want, made by an American company, that's actually made in America.
So am I a traitor for buying a UCLA hat made in China?
"If you're a traitor, then there're a lot of other traitors out there," Bazdarich said. A lot, indeed. At least now I finally have something in common with our president. Probably the biggest traitors of all are the corporate traders exporting our economy.
If you're not content with being like our president, and you find yourself in Ackerman with a UCLA hat in one hand and a moral dilemma on the other, Bazdarich has an encouraging thought.
"If enough UCLA students walk into Ackerman and demand to have UCLA hats made in America, they will do it," he said.
Sounds like a challenge.
And if I don't want a used drill?
Milwaukee Power tools huh? What do you think they do at these addresses below. Not sure myself, just asking. "Zona Industrial" in one of the locations particularly caught my attention.
Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation
13135 West Lisbon Road
Brookfield, WI 53005-2550
(262) 781-3600; Fax: (262) 781-3611
www.milwaukeetool.com
Milwaukee Electric Tool Canada
755 Progress Avenue
Scarborough, Ontario M1H 2W7
(416) 439-4181; FAX: (416) 439-6210
Milwaukee Electric Tool, S.A. DE C.V.
Blvd. Abraham Lincoln, # 13
Colonia Los Reyes, Zona Industrial
Tlalnepantla, C.P. 54073, Edo. de Mexico
5255 5565-1414; FAX: 5255 5565-0925
My 14 year old son wanted an upgrade on his guitar last year and it had to be a Fender Stratocaster. I don't remember exactly what the price difference was between the "American" Strat and the "Mexican" Strat, but it was at least $200. The actual differences between the two were described to me as: "One is built in Mexico by Mexicans while the other is built in Los Angeles - by Mexicans."
I figure I'm providing jobs for Mexicans either way and I prefer them working in their own country.
The one I bought last year was made in the US.
I'm not giving up my Body Butter. :-)
Then buy a new one.
The example I first gave was for someone's choices on a budget- buy the best deal (possibly foreign made) or buy a used one off ebay.
All of it? Every componant? No doubting. Again, just asking.
I wrote to Milwaukee just now to see what they say. I asked them if all the tools they sell in the USA are made in the USA or if they sell other tools in the USA that are made in other countries.
I'll let you know what they say. Or maybe someone on here already has the answer. So far we have one drill bought last year that is made in the USA.
Oops.....I misunderstood. My deepest apologies!
Milwaukee Tools
Headquarters and Facilities
Milwaukee is headquartered in Brookfield, Wisconsin... It has modern production facilities in Greenwood, Jackson and Kosciusko, Mississippi; Blytheville, Arkansas and Matamoros, Mexico.
Milwaukee’s products are also manufactured to its exacting standards in modern facilities in Europe and throughout the world... The company employs over 2,000 people serving customers globally.
http://www.milwaukeetool.com/us/en/about.nsf/vwPages/headquarters-and-facilities?OpenDocument
http://www.madeinusa.org/ Information, database and search engine for American made products
Some of Skil's tools are also made in the USA, and their Bit/Blade division (vermontamerican) exclusively manufactures in the USA.
RE: all my shoes.
Including athletic shoes? I find that hard to believe.
Tyrant Lincoln is hardly the 1 to quote.
As I stated in so many words, BRAIN POWER is more important than "labor" (i.e., manual work) will ever be. It means we are smart and enterprising enough to do whatever we want, get done whatever we want, and not be taken advantage of. Coupled with desire, initiative - which seems virtually inseparable from brains - we start the businesses that engender the *very labor* you all worry about so much. When we lack *that*, we are doomed.
And if the communist unions would stop insisting that they are worth $20/hr for putting on a screw, the laborers wouldn't be so expensive and drive the entrepreneurs here to go to cheaper pastures. Hence, they lose jobs because of their selfishness.
I wouldn't mind paying the price - but I don't like unions, either, and if faced with a U.S. union-made item and a Chinese one, I'll take the Chinese one. Unions, IMO, create more problems here than the workers overseas.
I'd love to know what kind of car you drive that is "American".
LOL - wonderful!
Here are a couple I found, unfortunately the sites aren't all that impressive or easy to use...
http://buyamerican.com
http://www.usstuff.com
Does anyone know either if there are any incentives to companies for using only American goods and services in their manufacturing?
What I find to be very interesting is the situation regarding vehicle recalls and the media: If a US automaker announces a recall, it's all over the news, but if a foreign automaker announces a recall, you have to dig for news about it.
Example:
Recently, Ford recalled some 800,000 vehicles for a cruise control switch problem.
Also recently, Honda recalled some 500,000 vehicles for a problem with the mechanism that prevents you from removing the key when the trans. selector is not in Park.
The Ford recall got MUCH more press, and news stories about it were posted here at least twice.
The Honda recall wouldn't even have been posted to this very forum (once) if I hadn't done it.
I would think that both are of a severe enough nature to warrant similar levels of news coverage, but that is not what happened.
UCLA ranks 11th nationally (from my quick Googleization) in foreign student enrollment. Westwood looks like Little Kowloon.
Educate America.
My Mitsubishi was manufactured in Illinois, but my old Chrysler was made in Canada.
Which one's American??
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