If Someone at Sears Were Smart....

[JerryC]

IMHO, the issue is value.

What is the cost of a tool that is good enough to do the job? If manufacturing overseas has reached a point where they can make a tool that can do the job and costs less it is hard to pass up. The extra cost one doesn't spend on a tool to "save american jobs" can be used on other items that could ""save american jobs".

So made in the USA items have to demonstrate a quality difference that matters to justify increased cost. Backing that up with excellent costumer support would help as well. No matter how great a product is, if you can't stand the place it is sold you arent likely to buy there.

Unfortunately made in the USA has obtained a bad reputation for a number of reasons, specifically the auto industry. Many consumers percieve buying USA made goods as supporting Union workers with poor work ethics while paying higher prices for sub-quality goods. People can possibly see the choice as being "cheap asian made ****" vs "expensive USA made ****".

 

[camarotoolman]

I sell only used usa tools. Many people just want cheap and very shinny is important too. I had a guy pick up a new snap on ratchet sunday, I told him it was 50, he went to had me a dollar, he thought it was 50 cents!

 

[Mister Moose]

I also have to agree as a few others have. This country needs to get back on the Made in USA bandwagon or all our money will be sent overseas. Our true wealth, a strong middle class, was built on hard work and innovation here in this country.

Fixed it for you.

Like it or not, we are in a world wide competitive market place. China offers manufacturing with far lower wage rates. Taiwan has the labor force now to turn out high quality manufactured goods at a lower price than we can do it in the US. Other countries will continue to go through this cycle as long as there is lower cost labor available somewhere. It used to be Japan. Korea is halfway into it. Mainland China is just getting going.

There is no magic here. Consumers vote with their wallet, and the resounding sound as posted above is value matters. And value should matter.

It won't ever be the same again.

What we can improve on is make our trade laws fair. You get to import freely only if we get to import freely. Make sure our tax laws are competitve world wide... we should not be incentivizing flight of capital. Reward hard work and investment. Explain to people profit is NOT a bad word. (Who wants to work and not make money? You sure don't, and you shouldn't expect any company to either. That's what made our country great.

 

[BrokewrenchLS1]

There is no magic here. Consumers vote with their wallet, and the resounding sound as posted above is value matters. And value should matter.

It won't ever be the same again.

What we can improve on is make our trade laws fair. You get to import freely only if we get to import freely. Make sure our tax laws are competitve world wide... we should not be incentivizing flight of capital. Reward hard work and investment. Explain to people profit is NOT a bad word. (Who wants to work and not make money? You sure don't, and you shouldn't expect any company to either. That's what made our country great.

Value in the short term. That's why most American consumers today aren't the most intelligent animals on the planet - they'd rather buy something at 50% cost with 25% life as compared to something more expensive that will last a lot longer. I go through it with my parents and car parts constantly - yeah, the knock-off piece of junk is cheaper right now, but it's going to fail in 3 months and you're going to have to replace it again. Spend more money up-front and you're more likely to get a better-quality item.

One problem with a lot of American manufacturing is they cut quality way down to save money on the manufacturing end, but didn't change the price of the items on the shelves. In turn, that caused people to buy import stuff, with the same quality, at lower prices. Then the US manufacturers outsource their stuff to China, still don't appreciably lower prices, and cut their quality even more...and they can't figure out why they're not making money.

Having worked some with foreign manufacturing (India) and knowing some people who work with Chinese manufacturing quite often, it's a mess. They have no concept of manufacturing standards or quality control, and will steal manufacturing designs in a second, drop their US manufacturing contract after a year, clone what they were selling and ship and sell it to the US for a fraction of what the US company had been doing.

Squaring our trade laws up would be a huge step towards market reform...but it'll never happen. There's no major politician with the balls to touch trade laws and piss the Chinese off, so there will always be a huge disparity between goods imported into the US, and goods exported out for sale.