I wouldn't have guessed it ...... made in the USA

[Stinky The Clown]

A cheap little glass vase we had. Sparkly went to wash it and this came off the bottom. The vase was used for some flowers she got in the last year or so. I was amazed. It is exactly the kind of thing we all see regularly and assume came from China.

[Brickbat]

1. I check the label of everything before I buy it.

I mean everything.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I do too.

The result of that effort is monumentally disheartening.

[foxfeet]

3. Same here. nt

[Brickbat]

9. It can be -- helps me put back stuff I don't need, though.

It's good for the wallet, and helps me make better meals.

[thecrow]

14. I do it all the time

and encourage my family to check the manufacturer's origin.

[rfranklin]

4. Remember that Japanese city named "usa"

There may have moved it to somewhere in China.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Etats-Unis makes it unlikely

:)



. . . . . although .... how hard is it to name a city in China Etats Unis?

[Gormy Cuss]

6. Manufacturing plants in Toledo and Shreveport.

Libbey's a multinational company yet still has production in the U.S.
http://www.libbey.com/content/view/94/172/

[brownstain]

7. Made in the usa

The only things made in the USA to-day are heartache, depair and poverty.

[Brickbat]

8. Try again.

[dmallind]

11. ....and the world-leading $1.8T of manufactured goods of course....NT

[pampango]

15. Your figure may be a little low.

"The United States is the world's largest manufacturer, with a 2007 industrial output of US$2.69 trillion."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#Manufacturing

[dmallind]

17. Nah - different figure

Mine is just manufacturing. Industrial output includes mining, utilities etc. Different ISIC codes. Good catch though and worth mentioning.

[Dappleganger]

13. Nice going, Eeyore.

[JuniperLea]

21. jeez... eom

[flvegan]

22. Welcome to DU! Or something.

[Bozita]

10. Bought a bag of Kroger's frozen brussel sprouts last month. Guess where it came from.

I was amazed.

















Belgium!

[jberryhill]

19. That's weird - my Belgian Endive came from New Jersey /nt

[brooklynite]

12. Maybe the barcode label was made in the USA...

...and what's all that foreign language doing there...

[upi402]

16. I've noticed more cheap crap is made here too

I guess China wants to make electronics, rockets and planes now. But cheap crap is how Japan climbed up to where they are as exporters.

[defendandprotect]

18. Wow . . . Made in USA hard to come by these days!

[dmallind]

20. ...because most of what we make is not consumer items

I just don't get the idea that many of the blocs complaining about mass consumerism are the same who judge their opinion of American manufacturing on anecodotal insights based on mass consumer items.

What we make more than other countries is not likely to be turned over on a shelf in a store. All those consumer items being churned out of Chinese factories? A very sizeable ratio of them are churned out using American-made machinery, inspected using American-made precision equipment, hauled around on American-made trucks and heavy machinery and shipped out of factories built by American-made capital equipment on land cleared by American-made heavy construction vehicles. The first sell for pennies. The last sell for $millions. Which would you prefer to make?

[SocialistLez]

25. I've never understood why

we have so many consumer goods made abroad and 70% (the figure I hear quoted most often) of our economy is dependent on consumer spending.

Americans (when they have the money) like to buy clothing. Why not make our clothing here?
We like smartphones and upgrading our cell phones like crazy. Why not make them here?

See where I'm going with this?

China has billions of people. Let them make their own sh**.

[dmallind]

27. Well I can help you there I think

There are two options

1) Accept that people buy normal consumer items such as (non-designer) clothing based in large if not on whole on price for comparable articles. A buyer faced with a choice between a $20 plain 6oz cotton T shirt anxd a $7 one will rarely buty the $20 shirt. Further understand that items like this which have high labor content compared to final value and which can be shipped in bulk efficiently will never be on an equal cost footing when you have $9/hr labor in one country and $9/day (or even week!) labor in another. So extrapolate that said price-competitive cost non-competitive mass consumer market will go to low cost labor countries

2) Do not accept the above by limiting or applying exceptionally high tariffs to imported T shirts so they either do not exist or also cost $20. Since the high labor cost article cannot compete on price (which is how consumers buy whether we like it or not) it can only compete based on limiting competition or equalizing price. We agree so far, right? Well whichever we choose the first thing is now T shirts cost $20, which is upward pressure on prices and downward pressure on real incomes for US workers, even those who have had nominal incomes go up by having upward wage pressure due to possibility of being hired by T shirt makers here. Secondly Malaysia and Bangladesh are pissed at us and will strike back. Now true they can't do much - we certainly sell to both but not enough to cripple our economy. However what happens when their bigger allies like China or Inidia, or even the WTO steps in and calls us on restraint of trade? We either accept equal punitive tarrifs on what we do sell, which does hurt our exports usually jobs which make more than the lower skilled sewing jobs in T shirt plants even here), or we tell the WTO to piss up a rope and become isolationists signatory to no trade agreements on fair tarrifs. So what's wrong with that? We import more than we export so even if we lose all the latter to gain all the former we win right? Well not really. Because now we have nobody to trade with to give them dollars, so they cannot buy our debt. And of course we can't use any of the Yen or RMB or Euros they may possibly offer uis for our debt, because we are no longer importing anything any more than we are exporting. So we become essentially an isolated economy with a currency only useful within the borders, with stagnant technology and investment options closed off to anything developed or made outside our borders. We essentially become a 1970s USSR or 1950s China economically. That did not go well, and wouldn't again.

[SocialistLez]

28. so we're fu**ed it seems?

We aren't making enough jobs to replace the ones we've lost and the "replacement jobs" we do have pay sh**.

I remember reading an article about an auto worker who became a nurse and his pay went down by about $30-50 thousand dollars.

[dmallind]

32. Nah not really. It will be a lot tougher for many though.

The idea of low or semi-skilled labor being a ticket to anything but grinding poverty is probably done I am afraid. There will always be someone in other countries willing to do it for less, and they will be able to unless we blow the whole thing apart. And that's not really the fault of NAFTA or even Reagan. They are only parts of the puzzle, but global trade and financial markets and immediate communication ability predates both, and those are the things that made this happen and that we would have to blow apart to change this. We can't have isolationism without returning to about the 1890s in all ways good and bad.

The new well paid jobs will still include some front line labor but these will be ones that have greater skill requirements. That's not to say there is no skill in, say, sewing, to use the same example. It's just a skill that for manufacturing purposes is much easier and quicker to learn than, say, CNC setup. So more people can do it, and some will do it for less. If you are a skilled welder or machinist or fabricator or maintenance tech you are probably still OK for a while at least, especially if you are mobile geographically. But starting out right now for people who are not maybe equipped or interested enough for the management/technical/professional route I'd say best things you can learn are trades that are impossible to outsource and unlikely to depend entirely on one industry. If I had a non-college-bound kid right now I'd get them apprenticed to a plumber at whatever slave wage they can deal with until they are competent journeymen. We'll always need to move waste and water, and the things that do it will always break down even if we never build another house again.

If you are a bit more academically inclined lab/tech training and jobs and health care sub-MD look good.

Academics might be better getting biochemistry degrees than MBAs right now. Engineers will always work well. Funnily enough I've seen the nurse example the other way round. Good RNs especially with some specialty unit experience remain in very very high demand even now. It's not a job I have the patience or even, I confess, the capability for, but for those who have it can be lucrative.

But working on an assembly line and expecting more than bare subsistence for it? Yeah that path through life is indeed probably fucked it's true. In return we get lower costs for the whole population, but at the price of lower incomes for a huge number (but not all) of them.

[SocialistLez]

33. Health care jobs

I considered it but I just can't deal with blood and guts.

I hope to land a job working as a LCSW or working at a college (student services, financial aid, advising, etc.)

[defendandprotect]

34. 50,000 of our factories have closed in the last 10 years . . .!!

I'd prefer that we overturn NAFTA and all of the trade agreements promptly!

Stick with LOCAL . . . it works better --

[HopeHoops]

23. I just got pool noodles at Dollar Tree - made in USA. Contrast with WalMart:

My neighbor bought some "on sale" at WalMart for $2.79 each (down from $3.99) - yep, made in China.

[Cleobulus]

24. Uhm, could have been made by Chinese slave laborers in Saipan...

that is, technically, U.S. soil. Or it could have been made in a sweatshop on the mainland. Not saying it was, but certainly a possibility.

[lies and propaganda]

26. in Sheveport!!!

i went to a field trip a year growing up!

[snooper2]

29. I bought a bucket at lowes yesterday, Made in USA...

Shocked the ever living shit out of me...

[Lone_Star_Dem]

30. Libbey Glass Company is responsible for Toledo being called "the glass capital of the world"

At one time they manufactured the windshields in in all American made vehicles, as well as made glass dinnerware for the home.

[madokie]

31. Thats a good sign

I bought something the other day that was made in the usa too, for some reason I can't, oh yes I remember it was a bic lighter.