This may end up being more of a rant than not, but I want­ed to write a lit­tle blurb about how I am try­ing to buy these days.  I have been look­ing for “Made in USA” labels recent­ly.  I have a strong belief that mon­ey that cir­cu­lates here in our coun­try is bet­ter served than buy­ing items made in Chi­na, Sri Lan­ka, Philip­pines, etc.

My frus­tra­tion for import­ed items is stem­ming from con­sumer goods.  As I con­tin­ue to prep and rotate my preps, I also look for items that need to be replaced.  For instance, this week­end, a bat­tery pow­ered lantern that I have had for some years is on the verge of dying.  So, I thought I would start inves­ti­gat­ing a new one.  My search, I went to Cole­man’s Web­site, went to their bat­tery pow­ered lantern sec­tion and start­ed research­ing some new cool LED lanterns.  At the bot­tom of every descrip­tion, I read “Made in Chi­na.”  Ugh, real­ly.  The all Amer­i­can camp­ing sup­ply com­pa­ny, Chi­na, real­ly.  Sor­ry if you are from Chi­na (Sur­pris­ing­ly, I have Chi­nese read­ers) and read­ing this post, but my phi­los­o­phy is that mon­ey that is cir­cu­lat­ed, spent, and recir­cu­lat­ed domes­ti­cal­ly is mon­ey bet­ter spent for a mul­ti­tude of rea­sons vs. mon­ey spent on items man­u­fac­tured in oth­er coun­tries.  We have unem­ploy­ment and oth­er issues that need to be reme­died by keep­ing the mon­ey in this coun­try, instead of send­ing it to oth­er coun­tries to cov­er inter­est on loans we did­n’t need if we just looked with­in.

So, I start­ed pok­ing my nose at oth­er Web­sites to see where oth­er prod­ucts were made.  Some were list­ed, and some were not.  I do have to say, I as I become more aware of what is man­u­fac­tured here and what is not, the major­i­ty of what I buy, includ­ing items such as shirts and blue jeans, are all made else­where.  What do we real­ly do to sup­port the Amer­i­can work­er?  What is real­ly man­u­fac­tured here any­more?  That ques­tion prompt­ed a search for a cou­ple of Web­sites which might list con­sumer prod­ucts made in the USA.  Here is what I have found:

• http://www.madeinusa.org/
• http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/
• http://www.americansworking.com/
• http://madeinusaforever.com/
• http://www.toysmadeinamerica.com/
• http://www.allamericanclothing.com/
• http://www.buyamerican.com/
• http://www.newbalance.com/usa/ (New Bal­ance Sneak­ers, the only ath­let­ic shoe man­u­fac­tur­er to still man­u­fac­ture ath­let­ic shoes in the USA)

I believe in sup­port­ing our econ­o­my.  I buy a LOT from Amazon.com.  I know this keeps Amer­i­can work­ers employed, but, now I am going to look for dis­tri­b­u­tion of the prod­ucts on Amazon.com (I trust Ama­zon as a secure E‑Commerce plat­form with sol­id poli­cies) to kill two birds with one stone, or I will start patron­iz­ing the above Web­sites direct­ly.

This is a VERY con­scious deci­sion that I have come to.  If you are read­ing this from anoth­er coun­try, and I know I have inter­na­tion­al read­ers, I urge you to do the same.  The world econ­o­my is in sham­bles.  Look for prod­ucts in your own coun­try, state, province, etc.  for prod­ucts you can pur­chase local­ly that are man­u­fac­tured there.  Sup­port your own economies, it might even give you a lit­tle more pride…