Americans' insatiable appetite for foreign-made goods

Is it really an insatiable appetite for foreign-made goods or is it a reflection of a bad economy, low paying jobs and the need to save money? If America could make products of equal or superior quality and at a competetive price then this problem would cease to exist.

If only elephants could fly? We cannot compete with low cost foreign labor. On any front I might add.

I don't know if there is a quick solution to this Au. I know when I go shopping I always look for the lowest price. I rarely check the country the item was made in. Except for underwear. I once bought some underwear made in China and came to the conclusion Chinese men do not have penises.

nick
Try and find a small appliance that was manufactured in the US. Or for that matter any article of everyday clothing. Lots of luck.

I prefer my underwear be made in Africa.

Are you advertising?

au, Our foreign trade deficit has a long-term currency problem; too much US dollars being spent that cannot be backed by US made products and services can only result in deflation of the US dollar. What's been happening is that both China and Japan have been buying US currency to boost it's value, but that only delays the inevitable. The continued trade deficit will have some limit; we're going to be buying products from China and Japan with monoply money, and their value to China and Japan will be worthless in the world market place. The over-valuation of the US dollar has other consequences; US stocks will be over-valued compared to the other economies of the world. Without capital investment, we will lose in the comparative advantage market place, because nobody will want US dollars.

From an interview of Emmanuel Todd (Historian and Political Scientist at the National Institute for Demographics in Paris).

A rift has been developing, slowly at first and then more quickly, between the US and their various geo-political areas of interest. During the early 1970's a deficit in the balance of trade began to open. The US assumed the role of consumer and the rest of the world took on the role of producer, in this increasingly unbalanced global process. The balance of trade went from a deficit of $100 billion in 1990 to $500 billion annually at present. This deficit has been financed through capital flowing into the US. Eventually the same effect experienced by the Spanish in 16th and 17th centuries will come to bear. As gold from the New World flooded in, the Spanish succumbed to decreasing productivity. They consumed and dissipated, lived high and beyond their means and fell into economic and technological arrears.

When I speak of the economy, then I mean the industrial core and the associated technological cutting edge, not the anemic New Economy. It is in the core industrial sphere that the US is falling dramatically behind. European investors lost billions in the US during the nineties, but the US economy lost an entire decade. As recently as 1990 the US was still exporting $35 billion more in advanced technology than it was importing. Now the balance of trade is negative even in this field. The US is far behind in mobile communications technology. The Finnish Nokia is four times the size of Motorola. More than half the communications satellites are being launched with European Ariane rockets. Airbus is about to surpass Boeing -- the most important transportation medium for personnel traffic in the modern global economy is about to be manufactured primarily in Europe. These are the things that are ultimately important. These are by far more vital and decisive factors than a war against Iraq.

The whole thing is here:
http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/the_conceited_empire.html