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O.T. Made in USA

C

Crem

Member
This week our local Menards Home Improvement store put out a sale flyer of products they sell that are made in the USA and they also listed where it was made. I was quite surprised at the amount of products made here that they sell and that the Channel Lock pliers are made in Meadville, PA rather than China. The 8" wire stripper is made in Chicago, IL. Maybe there is still some hope out there.
Sale Flyer
 
A lot of things are still made in the US. The problem is that the number of new items made here is much smaller than those items which move out. Just in the last year, or so... Vise Grip moved to China, Whirlpool closed a refrigerator plant in Evansville, IN. Went to Mexico. The US auto industry has in the last few years vastly increased foreign parts content on their vehicles including entire engines made in China (GM anyway).

I dont even want to get started on replacement parts for antique tractors. It aggrevates me to no end to go buy a reproduction item thats stamped CHINA when it was originally made in the USA!!! But it is good what we still have. When I buy hand tools; I typically go for Craftsman unless I cant find USA on the packaging!

Scotty
 
I have found some products with"Made in USA of Imported Products" labeled on them however I think Menards are a good outlet IMO.
 
There is hope out there, if the consumers buy them. These days every one wants to have everything, even if they cant afford it, so they buy the cheapest stuff they can just so they can afford. I always buy US made, but cant always find it. I do beleive if EVERY person that wants this economy to grow would walk up the the managers and email the company request lines, and made it known that they want more US made goods on the shelves or they will shop else where, that they would increASE THE DEMAND FOR us MADE STUFF. Most people wont do that because they feel they are being rude or inconsiderate. I have emmbaressed my kids plenty of times doing that, and they now are starting to see why I do it.
 
Im glad to buy USA made products, especially tools, but the USA has pretty well lost most of its manufacturing jobs and its NOT rocket science why. Due to the wage and benefit scale, by some union and some non union shops, its just cheaper to have goods made in China where wages are extermely low and theres less environmental and OSHA type of government regulations well DUHHHHHHH. However, when I agree with some like Pat Buchannan who suggest tariffs on foreign made goods in order to level the playing field and create American manufacturing jobs, Im shouted down and called names like a protectionist or isolationist. IMAGINE wanting to create American jobs at the risk of foreigners loosing jobs grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr lol.

Ol John T Christian Conservative Patriot
 
It's easy to blame the unions, but the percentage of workers represented by them is very small in the overall picture of things. How about corporate greed? No overhead & take all the profits. Yep, it's the little guy trying to make ends meet & raise a family, They are the reason this country is going down hill. Conservative types make me sick.
 
only way the cheap china crap will stop, is if everybody in the country gets tired of paying good hard earned cash, for cheap forigne junk that lasts only one or 2 uses, the biggest problem with that [ other than organising the whole population] is that the younger people, those under say 30, have never experienced the way things used to be when a man had pride in his work, when you bought a tool and took proper care of it, it could be handed down to your kid, they have always had junk, and they think junk is normal, its not, and thats a huge amount of buyers
 
I use Menards too, because its close, and I feel
some of my money stays "in state", (Menards HQ
is in Eau Claire Wis.) Yea, the sale flyer does
show some USA stuff, but I feel generally that
"Menards-Home of the warped lumber" is just
another outlet for China !
 
Last week I had to buy a specialty hydraulic fitting from Deere for my crawler. It cost $51 so you better believe I looked for alternatives, but I finally decided to cave and pay for the right part instead of cobbling. Well, I get the part and it's in a little cardboard box with MADE IN USA stamped all over it. I opened up the box and look the fitting over and it has MEXICO on every forged section. I wondered how they got away with that labeling until I noticed that the disposable plastic dust plug on the end had USA stamped on it. I would have chuckled, but I was still too upset about the price.
 
I will go out of my way to buy items made in the USA. As a general rule for me if it costs a little more I will buy it just because it will last longer and be more reliable. Just my 2 cents.

Leonard
 
This would be a good thing but lets look at the big picture that has been designed by our goverment.

1. Do we export more to china than comes here (farmers would you like to loose the soybean and corn market to South America).
2. Do these countries buy our dept. Deals are made when we borrow $$$$$$$. This is more detrimental than the accrual borrowing.
I'm afraid we could not stand the boycott the other countries would impose on us in return. Not to mention calling in our dept.
I am all in favor of taking care of ourselves but has the government got us in toooo far.
 
Dave,
The other evening I stopped in a bar and the guy sitting next to me worked for Fastenal and I believe that he was a little higher up in the chain. I talked to him about the company getting products made in China and he said that they do have some USA stuff. I think that I irritated him quite a bit by talking about it.
 
Strictly speaking, you can't "call in" debt of another sovereign country. The risk to the US is that China would stop selling us stuff on credit, but China doesn't have a replacement buyer for their stuff. We are stuck with each other.
 
Now the White House wants to raise the taxes on the same CEO (assuming he makes more than $250K per year), and the same people complaining about the bonus complain about the tax.
What a country!!!
 
USA manufacturing could easily be what it used to be and more if we got serious about producing our vast reserves of natural gas and oil, even if we restricted it to the reserves in the lower 48. The industrial boom from the early fifties to early eighties was fueled by cheap energy. Chinamen working for a $1.00 per day wouldn"t make any difference if the USA was energy independent again, nothing trumps cheap energy.
 
I like Menards too, but the new one in Bemidji is not opening until Feb! Recently I bought a furnace for my new shop and Lowes, they had the best price and I happened to be in Fargo. I couldn't find country of origin and it looked very well built, and it works great!(Mrheater, big Maxx) But when I was cutting up the box I found in small print, made in china! So, when I was in Menards I looked at theirs and it was made in USA, but many of the components look identical. My wife recently bought some New Balance shoes from Sears on line and they were made in USA, I didn't think we made any shoes anymore, the one that bothers me is how many are made in vietnam. We sure got $crewed with all the sheet rock that was imported from china, what a bunch of BS! Long enough rant!
 
Haven't had too much of a problem with HD, Just looking forward to Menard's, we moved here from St Cloud last year, and it was nice having both. HD has some very knowledgeable people in the electrical dept, helped me a lot with wiring my shop. But when I wanted 20 sheets of osb there was no help to be found! The last time I was in there there were associates all over and I didn't need any help. I bought most of my material from Pro- Built as they were way cheaper on the trusses and competitive on most of the rest.
 
If you think stuff made in the USA is automatically better quality and will last longer than ANYTHING made offshore, there"s a bridge in New York I"d like to talk to you about.
 
LAA,

You argument doesn't hold much water. Here's why:

1. China didn't develop its huge trade surplus through cheap energy. They have to buy their oil on the international market, just like everyone else. And they have to pay for it with dollars. China is able to maintain the trade imbalance with a combination of cheap labor, loose environmental regulation and a currency that is kept artificially devalued.

2. Domestic oil isn't cheaper than imported oil. That's why drill rigs are idle all over the country: no oil company will drill for oil that costs 100 bucks a barrel to produce when they can buy light Saudi crude for 70 bucks a barrel. All the cheap oil was pumped a long time ago.

3. Even if we do become energy-independent, that just leaves that much more oil on the global market, which the Chinese can get even cheaper than today.

The days of cheap energy are long gone, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If we want to become globally competitive, we need to become more efficient and do more with less.
 
Your correct about China -- but the advantages you listed are advantages only because everyone had to pay high prices for energy. China does not have the capability we have to produce and be energy independent. Keep labor costs and regulatory issues exactly as they are now and give us access to our reserves and China is sucking wind.

Domestic oil is cheaper when the industry is not regulated to death and notice I previously stated oil and natural gas, gas is the key but, in addition, we have enough proven domestic oil reserves to power our economy and cars for 300 years at the current utilization rates. As far as ''all the cheap oil was pumped a long time ago'' bunkum, technological advances renew old wells and fields every single day all over the USA and the world.

Saudi oil -- 70 bucks +- is the going price right now world wide. I work in Saudi Arabia and have for many years, Saudi oil is commodity priced the same as everywhere else. There are only 4 grades that bring the top dollar and one is Arabian light. The Saudi strategy is to maintain current production of approx. 10 million BPD unless demand falters and then adjust production to support prices. There are some major expansion projects taking place in the country right now and they all have price per BBL targets or are delayed/curtailed. I have seen it many times.

''The days of cheap energy are long gone'', huh, I always thought oil and gas were commodities and therefore subject to market forces, I guess I dreamed that oil was $9.00 a bbl. as recently as 1999 -- I guess the fact that oil is 1/2 the price it was 2 years ago is because someone waved a magic wand.
 
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