Made in America...Good Story

Not sure if this has been posted, but it's an interesting story, and would be great to see it get a little traction. I'd like to actually see a President stand behind a movement like this in order to at least seem to be about creating jobs again in this country...

http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_04vzdsr5/uiconf_id/5590821

This has nothing to do with protectionism imo...and everything to do with the fact that as the world develops, this country has every ability to continue to compete

Good stuff.

Excellent video. I had been told about it from a friend but this is the first that I have seen it. What a great idea. Thanks for posting it.

Big B

Great!!!

Thanks for posting his story John!

Only 5%

I agree lets go for 10,15, 20 plus %. We need to get quility back in products and not worry about the 2 or 3 % increse of price. I was just talking to my future son inlaw last night about the pipe wrenches he uses at work. They needed a 48" pipe wrench for a job went to the local supply house all that was there was a import, they bought it, broke it the second use, then ended up driving the extra 30 minutes to the next supply house to get a better american made wrench to finish the job. Now the company lost down time, extra gas to get the quilitiy american wrench to do the job. No saving's there.

What this shows us is that creating new markets creates new jobs. A drum I've been beating for some time. This is exactly the kind of thing an advocacy organization can and should be doing. The CoC's in the country don't seem to be too focused on this aspect of how to bring on an economic recovery.

In this case it all started with one guy.

Here's a direct link to the list:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Business/Made in America List.pdf

Also a list of Christmas gifts made in America:
Made in America: Gift Ideas - ABC News

Steve

Very cool story, especially the post-script about the J-bolt! Just shared on Facebook.

Gordon B. Clarke said:

This'll make me popular That's all about protectionism. There's very few countries in the world that would like nothing better than to be able to buy their own products. The reason most don't is that you have to be pretty big and diverse to do so.

What do you suggest small developed or large underdeveloped countries do to prosper? I can think of several small (but wealthy) in Europe alone that would become destitute without export as they simply don't have enough natural resources to isolate themselves from the world.

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The point I took away is not that you shouldn't buy from other nations, but that you should try to avoid it if you can. Denmark makes things - buy your own damn wind turbines, for example

I'd never have known there were still nails being made in this country. Learning that, it came as no surprise to hear they resulted in fewer jams.

The list of vendors is US-centric, of course - but what of someone in Denmark suggested to the educators there that such a list of Dånmårk-centric vendors could be compiled, possibly as a student project, and that it might be in the best interests of Danes to compile and exploit that list.

I wonder who we could find to kick that project off.....

Corps are de

35 years ago when I was building my own house, from the ground up, my local builder's builder's supply wanted, I think, 40 bucks for 50 pounds of drywall nails. Barbed blued nails. I asked why they wanted so much when I could buy them at the place down the road for 27 bucks? "Hell, I don't know, maybe they are Canadian."

They weren't, they were made in Croatia, part of the former Yugoslavia, shipped 5,000 miles and 2/3 the cost of home made. All my lath has STILL been bound to the walls and ceilings for all that time. They were not defective, as to date.

We can make some thing well enough and cheap enough, but WE are not the ones to make the decisions. That is for the wheels, and how they see the profit flow. If they see more profit from offshoring, that is what they will do. The more profit they make, as a company, the bigger the CEO and his minions get to share, and a few pennies trickle down to those of you who think corps are designed to make money for stupid people like stockholders. Not in a million years does the Corp have YOU in mind. All the profit they can keep is THEIRS to divvy up.

Such as Buffett, who takes a large enough interest to have some say at the table, 99% 0f stockholders have no say at all as to how a company is run. Carl Icahn has some say, but he, too, takes 5% or more positions. More than even the highest ranking Board member, the Chair. They typically hold a few hundred shares.

Aw, well.
Cheers,

George

Actually, my biggest takeaway from the clip is the 1% extra cost.
Tough I would much likely believe 5 - 10% or so, still that is the point.
Let's assume the house for example. It has a typical life expectancy of what? Maybe 50 years? Let's say 30 years on average before it's obsolete and not cool to buy.
An average new US home is maybe $200K? That is $10K extra with a 5% USA-made premium. That boils down to $334./year over the life of that house.
Now take the same to TV's. Maybe $20/year?
Washers, dryers, fridges, lawnmovers, snowblowers .....

This raised a big "stink" a few years back, the Chinese companies were held harmless in its wake.

2009 Chinese drywall controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for posting this John.

I rebuilt and added onto a deck at my house 3 or 4 years ago. I've got a Paslode framing nailer, so I picked up a box of nails for it at Lowe's. Chinese origin and $42 for the box. After all, nails are nails, aren't they?

The nailer would jam roughly 1 time in 5, so I took it to a store that primarily sells nails and nailers to contractors and also has a repair shop and extensive parts inventory for quality brands of nailers. The guy calls me the next day and says he can't find anything wrong with my nailer, so he's wondering if its a problem with the nails. I pick up the nailer and buy a box of Paslode (made in USA) nails from him. $51 for the box of nails, and no charge for checking out the nailer since I bought the nails from him.

I shot about 1500 of the framing nails, and about the same number of ring shanks for the decking, and the nailer might have jammed half a dozen times out of those 3000 shots. Total price difference on the 2 boxes of nails compared to the Chinese ones was about $20 for 4000 nails, or half a cent apiece. And yeah, I returned the Chinese ones for my cheerful refund since I had no use for them.

Back to the subject of buying American to help the economy, I saw a short piece a while back on one of the cable news channels that said if every person in the US would shift $1.50 per day from the purchase of imported goods to the purchase of US made goods, it would reduce the trade deficit by $110 billion and directly create 1 million additional jobs based on the theory that a job will be created for each $100K of additional domestic spending on manufactured goods.

They went on to say there would be secondary job creation as a result too, even though it might not be obvious at first since they were talking strictly about a shift of spending rather than creating new demand. Their explanation was based on additional money flowing within the borders rather than leaving the country where it has little chance of creating another US job. Additionally, they theorized that there's nothing as powerful as consumer spending habits as a force to change the attitudes of US business toward outsourcing, and this would both discourage companies who are considering oursourcing and encourage the ones who are outsourcing to consider bringing production back to the US to maintain or increase their own market share.

The whole thing seemed sensible to me. It requires no government intervention, and the neither the rich nor the mega-corps could buy themselves a government goon to stop it. Additional jobs would enhance the tax coffers, both thru individual income and payroll taxes, and thru impeding the ability of the ones who're currently importing everything they sell to park profits offshore thru accounting tricks and outright fraud. If you make it here and sell it here, there's not any simple way to claim your Irish sales office somehow ended up with all the profit. Its just a shame that so many Americans can't see past the end of their own noses and make that buck and a half a day spending shift.

gmatov said:

We can make some thing well enough and cheap enough, but WE are not the ones to make the decisions. That is for the wheels, and how they see the profit flow.

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I beg to differ. We have a very large voice in helping them make those decisions. If we don't buy, they don't sell and thus their profits tank. Quite simple really.

Sure there will always be people willing to spend upwards of $100.00 for an imported shirt because it has a pony logo where normal shirts have a pocket. Had we not opened the door for them to so easily export from places like red China yet sell at prices they would charge for domestically made goods, things would be much different here.
I've always tried to buy locally. That is no sin. Most every other person from other dveloped countries do too I would imagine. It only makes sense... as long as the price and quality are at least on a par with the import stuff.

I lost my taste for cheap imports when my wife brought home Chinese scissors that wouldn't even cut paper (oh but they were so much less expensive!) and simple nail clippers that self destructed on the first use.

I hope this 'protectionism' thing gains momentum and because of it we gain jobs.

Good Post and Good Story,

I don't know how many PMers have any experience doing business in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, China, and India), so I thought I'd relate a little bit of what I know about doing business in China and India.

As a US manufacturer of equipment, my company sold a number of systems into both countries in the past. What we found was a very high and unfair import duty for US manufactured goods going to either country. Both China and India put a 35% duty on US manufactured items, while manufactured goods from their countries to the US bear a duty of around 1-2%. China has an even bigger kicker, they offer a zero income tax incentive for chinese goods manufactured for export.

My experience has been that the labor cost advantages have much less to do with the undermining of our manufacturing compared to the Unfair trade agreements that our politicians have signed us up for.

Gordon B. Clarke said:

I certainly don't disagree with that. IMO the two biggest sinnners are the the importers that order and import the cheapest products and the politicians that make the rules.

A high price and good quality aren't givens but a very low price and bad quality is. Who makes the big bucks when cheap goods are made and sold? I can't imagine it being the manufacturer or the workers doing it regardless of which country does it.

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Their is a good reason to suspect there is more money made retailing cheap nails than in manufacturing quality nails. Especially if it is difficult to find quality nails to sell retail. Free markets don't consider what is "fair", only what creates profits. People who sell nails that rust away in 5 years never see the consequences - the feedback loop is too long, too easily lost in the noise.

The built-in accountability in the free market (beyond just nails) doesn't always work. It costs too much and in most cases the cost is passed on to the insurance companies, or the consumer absorbs the loss.

dp said:

Their is a good reason to suspect there is more money made retailing cheap nails than in manufacturing quality nails. Especially if it is difficult to find quality nails to sell retail. Free markets don't consider what is "fair", only what creates profits. People who sell nails that rust away in 5 years never see the consequences - the feedback loop is too long, too easily lost in the noise.

The built-in accountability in the free market (beyond just nails) doesn't always work. It costs too much and in most cases the cost is passed on to the insurance companies, or the consumer absorbs the loss.

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I don't think we have had a "free" market in this country for some time. The shifting of our manufacturing overseas really got started under the clinton administration. His "economic advisors" advised that it would be better for the US to have cheap stuff in stores than to have high wage and high tax base manufacturing in this country. Not to single out Clinton because "economic advisors" have given the same advise to every president since.

I think it's a false premise to blame the free market in this. A free market should be expected to act rationally in the pursuit of profits. It is our government that manages the rules of the game so that the free market does what is in the best interests of our country.

On that count, they have failed miserably by allowing manufacturing goods for the US market to be more profitable overseas.

dekoopman said:

The shifting of our manufacturing overseas really got started under the clinton administration. His "economic advisors" advised that it would be better for the US to have cheap stuff in stores than to have high wage and high tax base manufacturing in this country. Not to single out Clinton because "economic advisors" have given the same advise to every president since.

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The shift to offshoring and the "service economy" started with Raygun in the US, and thatcher in the UK, it was their goal.

Surely there must be increases in efficiencies and a better 'green' footprint from sourcing local? How can it be good to ship things half way round the world when it can be made local?

dekoopman said:

I don't think we have had a "free" market in this country for some time. The shifting of our manufacturing overseas really got started under the clinton administration.

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Do you just make this stuff up or are you just regurgitating something you heard on Faux News?

Here's a fact to ignore or dismiss as you wish...
1972 Nixon visit to China - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia