Chinese Refrain
 

Yesterday, 01 August, was Lammas Day! I've decided to refrain from purchasing any Made in PRC goods for the next month. I'm curious how difficult it is going to be to: (1) Discover where each particular product is manufactured; (2) The cost difference of alternatives; and (3) How many goods I typically purchase are from the PRC. I'm not a big consumer because I prefer non-packaged foods and usually small volume specialty items over assembly line products, but, nevertheless, it should be interesting. I know Merrylander and others have done this and would be curious as to the difficulty of the undertaking.

Good luck with that.

I have been trying.

You may find it to be much harder than you expect.

Sad, but true.

Dave

This may help....

http://www.madeinusa.org/

Too late now. China is up and running. :D

Not really that difficult, but if you embarass easily you don't want to come shopping with Florence or me. For example, I was in Ace Hardware looking for Delta replacement pop-up sink drains (water here is acid). All I found at first was made in PRC so I loudly ask "Is all you have this Chinese garbage, is there no made in America?" Turns out they did have it but explained that it was more expensive. Shirt company in Canada had the motto "No one ever regretted buying quality". Works for me.

I did manage to find some hair clippers that were "Made in the USA" recently.


Wahl....nice clippers. Thing is, they were only a couple bucks more than the PRC made ones. I guess you have to be one of the few that still gives a damn to spring the extra two bucks.

Dave

I suppose some of you fellows know that "Made in the USA" can also means made in Saipan, where they employ essentially the same labor practices as mainland China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saipan#...al_regulations

I bought an ignition coil the other day, to my surprise it was made in the US of A.

Good luck bhunter, I'm very curious.

Pete

Saipan, Huh. Interesting.

Interesting because it is a US territory in which US owned companies are free of the labor laws imposed on them here on the mainland.

Take a good, long look at how they behave.

Is this what you want for the coming generations of Americans?

Dave

I just got a largish order of car parts in, I checked them out. Interestingly all the parts were US made except for a water pump o-ring gasket, made in Spain.

Pete