Made in China- do we care?

[Grog]

I want my neighbors to have/keep their jobs too.

The government can not say "let's buy made in the good 'ol USA" or anywhere else if you live somewhere else. If they were to do so everyone screams "protectionism bad bad". But we can! I think we all agree wherever you are and whether you're blue, red, green or chartreuse that we need to keep jobs in the US or wherever we all are.

The hard geopolitical reality is that the reason why the American government can't say "let's buy Made in the USA" is because it pretty much imposes the same on others. A LOT of jobs in the USA depend on the export of American products and services in higher value-added areas (complex services, technological products, etc. not consumer goods). Americans disproportionately benefit from the anti-protectionist agreements they have signed with other countries, NAFTA for example. These countries don't necessarily prevent the American government from acting in a protectionist way: if an international court rules against the USA, they can simply ignore the ruling. Power is not distributed evenly on this planet.

Coming from a minority standpoint (Quebec, a French-language island in a very loudly English-speaking part of the world), I know that protecting certain areas for social, political, or cultural reasons has become extremely difficult. This is not so much a problem in the USA, but it is in other countries whose local industry cannot resist the massive investments and sometimes dumping of American products. The scale just can't compare.

As Susan pointed out, we can ask people to "Buy American" (or "Buy Canadian") all we want, most still won't. People would rather have more purchasing power than supporting local business. The fact that the real salaries of the middle class have not really increased in the last few years certainly does not help, to say nothing of those of the poor! On the other hand, I also know that people want their pension savings to increase in value, thus they want the corporations whose shares they own to make profits and distribute dividends. So corporations do what they have to do to attain that goal, including localizing their production where labour is cheap and regulation lax.

I do not necessarily agree (although I think it's not black and white) but I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.