Replies

“In fact, American companies have quite valid reasons beyond any tax advantage to establish overseas affiliates: That’s how they reach foreign customers with US-branded goods and services.”

This doesn’t explain why I can’t find American made goods on the shelves at my local stores.

This doesn’t explain why I can’t find American made goods on the shelves at my local stores.

You must not live near or shop at WalMart. I find a plethora of MADE IN AMERICA labels at my local stores, and it isn't just foodstuffs. WalMart has ALWAYS placed American products on their shelves. Customers choose from the shelves. If the Chinese (or ANY foreign made) products are comparable, the customer will usually choose by PRICE.

I will buy anything from anybody, when it comes to my wallet. I'm off to Winchester in a little while, and will stop there after I visit Costco (the hundred dollar store). How about you?

... Or it's another sign of the gulf between cosmopolitans who benefit from globalization and blue-collar workers whose wages have gone steadily downhill because of competition from abroad. Some people appreciate the 24-hour customer service line, regardless of the accent of the person on the other end. Others are strictly "Buy American." Of course, sometimes the same person lost her job last week at the factory and this week shops at WalMart to save money by getting cheap shirts from Sri Lanka, cheap produce from Mexico, and cheap Halloween decorations from China. - John FefferCo-director of Foreign Policy In Focus

"This doesn’t explain why I can’t find American made goods on the shelves at my local stores."

That is because we don't make consumer goods here anymore, save for a few "boutique" products. Some folks think that is a fine thing, but it frankly scares me to death.

Every US warfighter is using IT hardware built in the People's Republic of China. There is no US vendor who could supply the same products to our warfighters. They are all gone. If the ChiComs ever throw the kill switch-yes, of course there is a kill switch in your son's platoon's Toughbook; you'd be delusional to believe otherwise-our forces will be at their mercy.

This doesn’t explain why I can’t find American made goods on the shelves at my local stores.

The explanation is that the American dollar is overvalued and has been since Nixon took us off the last vestige of the gold standard. The result has been to make foreign goods cheaper here and American goods too expensive to compete.

Taxes, union benefits and onerous regulations certainly contribute, but its the Federal Reserve's monetary policy (with, of course, the willing complicity of presidents and the congress) that has hollowed out our manufacturing.

This is why Bernanke and Obama have embarked on a desperate ploy to lower the value of the dollar. They're going about it in the wrong way -- printing new ones to make the old ones worthless.

The correct method would be to stop inflating and to stop playing with interest rates. A stable dollar and interest rates that reflected the true scarcity of capital would gradually allow us to discover our real comparative advantage and to stop jumping through the financiers' hoops.

It isn't destiny that we "progress" into a service economy -- look at Germany. We have only ourselves to blame for having allowed Washington to fiddle with our money according to the latest academic fad.

Amazingly the shelves are crammed with plenty of American made goods, but the standards for labeling refer to "assembly" ~ so those goods made here, or by American companies abroad, get shipped to China for assembly and repackaging, and then you think all of it is made in China.

It's actually far more complex than that, but the label on the box doesn't really tell the story.