Is Anything Made In The USA Any More?

I'm on mailing lists that send me catalogues for army clothes, gas masks,
survival...etc.

I still don't know how I ever ended up on these lists!

There are a number of Ford and GMC plants in Canada. Aren't some of them made in Mexico as well?

My son, the total car nut, and I recently were talking about where the different cars are manufactured. He said Saturn is the only car now made wholly in the U.S. Canada has several factories where they make parts and ship them to the U.S. I believe Mexico makes certain cars (can't remember which kind). Well, I guess the Saturn can go on the list unless something has changed, which wouldn't surprise me.

There's a Ford assembly plant on either side of Toronto. Chrysler's just down the highway. It's quite disconcerting. Honda's are made here as well. It's very difficult to find a Honda that was made in Japan - mine's ancient, so it still says Made in Japan on all the VIN stickers.

Cars are global: pieces come from all corners of the world.
Most production is global.
The protectionist cry is heard everywhere. We forget that the money the other nations get from their exports is often used to buy our exports.

In continuation of Fbaezer's response: the finished goods are always much more expensive than sum of prices of their ingredients, both domestically manufactured and imported. Therefore, U.S. economy is not endangered by globalization.

steissd and fbaezer have it right IMO. It's globalization, inevitable and not something to be alarmed about.

My new sheets ( made in Israel ) feel like they contain a bit of steel in them!

Craven

But maybe the workers in US factories have something to be alarmed about as their jobs disappear?
A side of globalization I don't appreciate: the exploitation of 3rd world labour by the big multinationals.

msolga,
"It's evolution baby!" - Pearl Jam

I respectfully disagree in regard to the exploitation angle. Exploitation occurs but by and large much of what is called exploitation of cheap labor is beneficial to the "exploited". When some hear the salaries being paid by multinational companies they recoil without realizing that the wage is usually better or at least equal to the best salary the laborers could have gotten. That being said there has been serious exploitation of nations in the past (I'm thinking bannana republics here).

Craven

I cringe when I see what, for example, Nike pay their Indonesian workers per hour, then see the humungous profits the company is making. Especially when I know about government pressures on anyone who tries to unionize the workers in Indonesia. People are jailed & persecuted for these activities.
Then, I wonder what the former Nike employees in say, the US, are now doing for a living?

Third World exploitation is not a result of globalization. It was there way way before.

Before Soviet Communism collapsed, Capitalism (in it's "last phase": Imperialism) was the cause for Third World exploitation. Now that Communism is almost gone and Socialdemocrats are far away from their elders of the Second International, the culprit is globalization.
It's only a new name.

Do you want Capitalism, with all it's freedoms? Then you must abide to it's laws. Some of them, as inavoidable as gravity. You can alleviate some of Capitalism's worst sins, but you cannot expect Corporations not to go after the biggest profit, and search for loopholes in the process. Lucre makes this darned world go round.

fbaezer,

I was going to say that exploitation of cheap labor predates globalisation but by some definitions globalism isn't new.

msolga,
Nike does not pay any of the workers. Nike is a marketing company and as far as I know they don't make anything.

Sure it's ugly that the workers would never be able to afford the shoes they make but Nike's business model doesn't leave much room for alternatives.

Nike pays exorbitant prices to market shoes that they intend to sell at a premium. They only sell because of the endorsements and those endorsements don't come cheaply. But yes, I think the workers deserve a higher salary and anti union efforts are shady at best. But I just don't blame Nike for this. The best way for those salaries to be improved is for the rich nations to lower tarrifs. But then we are back to the job losses in the rich nations and we start the circle again.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that business is competitive, markets are floating. With that in mind I think globalisation can't be faulted exclusively for said problems.

About disappearing jobs:

In any given economy, after the secular stagnation of the Middle Ages, jobs appear and disappear. Agricultural jobs give way to industrial jobs, which in turn give way to high-tech and modern services jobs.
The crux of the problem, which affects the lives of real people, bone and flesh, is that some generations find themselves in the transition period.
The rate of growth of low-qualification blue-collar jobs is slowing in the US. It seems that many are stuck between no-qualification burger-flipping jobs or jobs that demand too much qualification.


msolga,

in the US, employers pay by the hour.

Craven

Yes, I understand what you're saying, but, but .... I simply think that if we are now living in a global economy that there should be some form of global control & protection of exploited workers, in the 3rd world & elsewhere. We need global answers to the real issues for workers under a globalized market. Call me idealistic, but I don't think it's enough to just let large companies go for the cheapest means of production, with no checks & balances for the people who produce the goods that produce the profits.

(ps. Nice to see you back, Craven! )

And please, let me rant a bit.

Many people in the richest nations want to have the cake and eat it, too.
They want economic freedom, commodities at low prices, high salaries for their blue-collar workers, respect for the environment, and a high rate of employment.
They want their corporations to "keep the jobs" home, but they are not happy when they see the "hungry, tired, poor and wretched masses" migrate to their country.
Well, there is no such thing as a free ride.

How can we achieve this global control & "protection"?
The most effective way to stop such exploitation would be the transnational organization of workers, as Trotsky envisioned.
This is not going to happen. National, cultural and income differences weigh much more than class solidarity.
The other route has to do with the instauration of international law, and that's the way the more civilized part of the world seems to be heading.
It will take a long long long long time before something meaningful, in terms of the international socioeconomic system, is done.

fbaezer

It's time that "international law" began addressing the problems created for workers in a globalized world/market.

I agree. This is the only transitable route now.
But this is a new phenomenon, and it will take time.

And the way it has worked most, so far, has been the Multilateral Trade Agreements. The very tools of globalization.

Nafta has some provisions that favor workers, and some international solidarity has arisen in several conflicts. (Mexican and Canadian unions or groups of workers have benefited by them; most US workers gripe individually, but resist unionization)

The European Union has meant huge advancement for workers in the formerly poorer and less organized countries.

Big change is coming when judges and lawyers manage to build international cases. Now they're mostly against individuals (I'm thinking about former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet); in a few years more and more corporations will be prosecuted. Expect political resistance, mostly from the US.

We are on diapers. And a war without UN consent would be a backlash against this growth of international law.

Very interesting, fbaezer. Thanks for the information.
I'll be interested in hearing more.