Buying American - what it means to me

Back to buying American, to put my values into action, I’ve spent considerable time trying to figure out what quality products are made in the U.S. and making a conscious effort to buy them. It’s much harder than one would think, and I understand why a lot of people don’t have the time or energy to make the effort. For example, if one does a Google or Amazon search for “Made in America PRODUCT NAME”, most of the results are not made in America. Instead, companies are buying the search term, “Made in America clothes” for example and serving ads for imported products.  It’s very misleading and the search engines do nothing to counteract these practices. The other bit of nonsense that companies engage in is to say, “Designed in California, Made in China”. That’s great, except that what they often really mean is, “Designed in California today, and made in China with a plan to migrate the design work to China as well.”  Once a company gets hooked on the drug of low-cost labor and minimal regulations, it is typically only a matter of time before they get tired of paying American engineers, too.

Not only is it hard to find American-made products, but it is almost always more expensive. However, I will note two things in this regard. First, I find that many, though not all, of the American products I buy are of higher quality. They last a long time; they fit better and work better. That’s worth it to me when considering the lifetime cost of the product, but I appreciate that for a lot of people, budgets are so tight that buying American is a luxury they don’t feel they can afford. Re:Build hopes to be a part of changing that by expanding well-paying quality manufacturing jobs, but I digress.

Second, in my experience of consciously buying American products for over thirty years, I’m pleased to report that it is definitely getting easier to find U.S. made goods of all types, including things that you would most definitely think were 100% imported from low labor countries. I offer you two examples. First, consider plastic spatulas for flipping pancakes and eggs, etc. As recently as five years ago, I literally couldn’t find a single plastic kitchen implement made in the U.S. I must have looked at hundreds of spatulas, spoons, etc. However, I ultimately came across Patriot Plastics at the catchy website, www.MadeinUSAForever.com and ordered a set of kitchen tools. I will grant you that this spatula was not cheap ($13.95) but I can report that after having lost countless spatulas to melting on the side of pans this one is literally indestructible, being made of a higher melting temperature plastic than the $8.59 Chinese version available on Amazon.

Another great example is the ubiquitous nail clipper. Every family has one, maybe more than one, and essentially all of them are made in China. They are lucky to last a year; the levers always break, and they just feel cheap. A few years ago, I found the “No-mes” brand of fingernail clipper on Amazon for $20.95. Again, much more expensive than the $4 Chinese product, but infinitely better. It has better features (details we need not go into here) and is literally unbreakable. I understand that fingernail clippers and spatulas are not going to change the world in a radical way, but to me, the presence of high-quality American products at the low end of the market – these are not technology-centric sophisticated products – is a sign that things are changing for the better. If we can make spatulas profitably in the U.S., we can probably make pretty much anything. And, if supply chains are massively disrupted in the future, we can all rest a little easier knowing that pancakes can still be flipped.

While I just glibly noted that spatulas and nail clipper purchases aren’t going to change the world, they actually can. The U.S. population stands at 327 million people. If each of us shifted $100 in consumption from China to the U.S. each year, we would add $33 billion worth of U.S. manufacturing annually. That’s more than fifty Re:Builds that could be created; tens of thousands of high-quality jobs. More important, we would send a signal to the consumer brand companies that we care not just about the product itself, but where, how, and under what conditions that product is made. Today, many people are quick to buy products “responsibly made in China”, but what does that really mean? Is a U.S.-based marketing company really able to ensure responsible conditions in China? Clearly not.  And further, what does that even mean when the entire supply chain supporting a “responsible” factory is under the thumb of a dictatorship? 

When we vote with our dollars and buy American, we induce American companies to invest in U.S. factories, and U.S. workers. They pay taxes that support our democracy, our schools, and that build roads and parks in the communities where we live. To me that is a worthwhile investment. 

To the extent that you can find your way to buying something made in America, great. You will undoubtedly pay more, and we can’t always afford to make that choice, but if we can buy one or two more things that are Made in America each year, we will make a substantial impact. The U.S. manufacturing base didn’t migrate offshore overnight, and we can’t build it back up overnight either. But we can – we have to – start somewhere.