Do you prefer to buy products made in the country in which you live?

Yes - I even try to buy stuff made in my state. I like to keep as much of my money local as possible.

It doesn't matter. ......... TBH, I like to wear certain brands of clothing but oft times you see "US" clothing made in Vietnam/Indonesia ..even here in Jamaica "Tommy Hilfiger" clothing was made here and "Jockey" had a huge factory here

Depends in which country I'm living.

But generally, yes.

I don't think "buy local" makes sense.
When it comes down to it, it amounts to corporate welfare. Or, worker welfare, pandering to unions. It's another form of socialism.
Free markets are critical to the heath of an economy and this sort of thing throws a wrench into free markets.
People should buy the best quality products at the best prices. If they do anything else, makers of products will not be motivated to make better quality products at lower prices.
Free markets are inevitable. People may "buy local" at times, but when push comes to shove, they will do what's best for them. Then, the welfare system breaks down and we have a disaster. Isn't GM owned by the UAW and the US government now? Could there have been any other result?
Then, there's "trade wars". If we try to force the issue with laws/tariffs (more market distortions) we just cause more problems, backlash, market inefficiencies (artificially high prices, etc.)

"buy local" is a kind of tribalism. We're saying we'd rather help the people in our tribe (who live near us) as opposed to the people who live far away. That feels a lot like nationalism to me. Maybe you think nationalism is a good thing too. I think there's a humanist perspective here too, though. China has been a poor country for a long time now. What that means is that a large portion of the people in China have very hard lives. Compare this to the US and it's embarrassing. We're all fat. But, we shouldn't buy Chinese products because we should be supporting US workers and corporations! I think Chinese people are humans too. I think they are part of my tribe, just like my neighbor is. I think buying stuff made in China is OK. Maybe it's even better, because they deserve a chance at a better life and most of them still have very hard lives.

Well, maybe you don't care about that either, but you can still look at it in an enlightened self-interest way. As people buy stuff made in China, and the people there see a rise in their standard of living, they will begin to have more money to spare and they will begin to buy stuff the same way we do. All those people will now be potential customers of US products. And, China has the largest population, so this is not a small number. It goes both ways. Ultimately, buying their stuff will help us. It will take a while, but over time, this sort of economic exchange will equal out and everyone benefits. Also, we're much more likely to have peace and not war. If we're interconnected with economies of all the countries in the world, then war hurts everyone and it becomes something that everyone wants to avoid.

Other it depends. I don't buy produce from Chili, I wouldn't buy toys from China. It isn'ta bout poitics, it's about health. I don't like to invest in communist countrys but I like quality first, and for so long the US pumped out crap, I sought outside first for important investments,.
I totally prefer to buy US right now, as investment puposes. Half the time I wonder if our food goes to other countrys, and it comes back to us at a higher price. I worked with a guy that bought only from the US. In fact, he would not accept any gifts (birthday, christmas) that did not have a made in the US label. That was extreme.

Doesn't matter to me.

yes whenever its possible and practical

Yes

Yes. I'm not very consistent about remembering to check, and I'm not really all that adamant about it anyway. But I have been trying to avoid, to the extent I can (which isn't much), things made in China, until they step up their oversight, environmentalism, and civil rights. And if I can get something that was made locally and didn't have to be shipped halfway around the globe, that's a plus, too.

Another way to look at it is that when you buy stuff from China, you're supporting terrible environmental practices, lead poisoning, and unjust imprisonment. Boycotts are another critical part of free markets. If China doesn't reduce their pollution, it won't much matter which "tribe" is doing best, since we'll all be dying of cancer.

That is if we don't drown under all the melted polar ice because China builds a new coal electric plant every week.

I don't think humans in general are capable of averting the coming environment disasters. But, once they really start to affect us, we will respond to the crisis. It will be mostly too late, but that's how it goes.

Still, I think it's a little unfair to be critical of China given all the bad environmental stats against the US. Oh yeah, and we torture people, I saw it on teevee. We started a war for oil too. You should see what they say about us, and it's all true.

I have seen the "buy local" thing rationalized as a way to reduce carbon because shipping stuff uses more fuel (thus producting CO2).

I would, if my country actually MADE anything.

Yes, but that is practically impossible. Everything is made in China.

> Yes - I even try to buy stuff made in my state.
> I like to keep as much of my money local as possible.

Hah, easy to do with Fords?

Dang... thanks for the dose of thought. Seriously.

Well the problem is, Ford doesn't make their heavy duty trucks in Michigan. And my Bronco was built in St. Louis. It's engine in Windsor, Canada. Hell, I don't know if it's possible to buy anything that is 100% made in anywhere.

Depends what it is - food,yes - mostly because it will be fresher. Other things, I don't really pay much attention.

Whatever's cheapest.

If I can, but it's rarely possible. If products are similar I'll go for American made.

Watch out for those for american flag logos. Often they mean nothing at all; sometimes they just mean 'designed' in America.

I agree with your 'all one tribe' view. For me the issue is countries not all playing by the same standards. When I buy American (besides reducing shipping, which should be all wind/solar anyhow), I'm paying for labor and environmental policies built into the product.

A free market would work though if I had a convenient means of checking the practices of foreign products.

I expect that eventually this will exist, that one will brush their iPhone across product options and get $/environmental marks, $/hourly-wages+benefits, or any weighted combo of value per dollar formulae one wanted.

I have mixed feelings about the boycott thing. I believe, for both nations and individuals, in supporting the good they do and not contributing to the bad. It occurred to me that if I had some baragaining power with companies, for instance wished to place an order for 800,000 microchips, that I would make as a condition of purchase their forwarding a letter to their government that I was reluctant to make such a purchase because of their organ harvesting policies.

Maybe China could ship their cheap plastic crap to the US via dirigibles. Where did I hear that?

I suspect that trade negotiations is just not the right place to try to resolve environmental and/or human rights issues. Very likely, both of those problem can only be solved from the inside by China. I think as more Chinese people enter the middle class, more of them will put pressure on their own government to fix these problem. Admittedly, it will likely be too late, but the US is also guilty of too little too late, in my opinion.

I think our culture often makes the mistake of assuming that we can just tell another country how to do things and it will work. When, it seems quite obvious that that sort of thing rarely works and instead often provokes negative reactions (even wars).

I think the easiest way to understand what it must be like is if we were to imagine China telling us that we needed to stop killing babies (legal abortion in most states) and torturing people (Gitmo) and wire-tapping our own people and polluting the Chesapeake Bay (it has "dead zones" now) and Puget Sound (the Orca population is expect to be zero within a decade or so), etc. Our reaction would be, "Fudge You China! Mind your own damn business! We're working on most of the problem, but it's hard, etc." So, why do we think telling China to do this or that is a good idea? Same goes for N.Korea or Iran or ...

You're aware the reply screen doesn't work lately, aren't you?
You're getting this reply because checkbox replies or replying directly to random comments does still work.

I believe as time evolves, internal boundaries dissolve and international commerce becomes the only form of government. If consumers do not exert their power there, they will have no power at all.

"it will likely be too late" - said more than once recently. You're becoming a fatalist.

"I think our culture often makes the mistake of assuming that we can just tell another country how to do things and it will work." - Other countries attempt the same with us, as I feel they should. The problem is that our media doesn't rebroadcast their sentiments much at all, and thus our democratic public body is unaware of any cause to change.

In your open market manner, I was suggesting business to business politics, and not nation to nation boycotts. Boycotts are themselves wars anyhow.

It seems to me China would be well within it's rights to do such a thing if they stood on higher moral ground to begin with, and could afford to shun us. Neither is true however. I think our own government would be more responsive to a severe hit on our international economy than any influence a majority of our own voters expresses.

Along my own version of one-tribe thinking, things like Jerusalem, Yellowstone, or the rainforest are assets of the whole tribe which no one should be decimating, and things like banning the import of ivory are appropriate.

On the other hand it seems to me some socialism goes hand in hand with this. If the last of the elephants is the only commodity some African tribe has, we need to feed them to save the elephants, and can't expect them to starve themselves on behalf of the greater good by subscribing to moral standards they can't afford.

In view of this last post of yours you have me scratching my head as to what realm your stance against nationalism refers to. At best I can imagine that you mean not to socially take individuals for their nationality, as it appears that politically you are all for nationalism.

I don't see dirigibles as an improvement over ships, only over trucks and trains for immense items like 300' wind turbines.

For chinese crap I recommend electric ships on floating rails powered by tethered ocean current turbines.

local please.

Yes, the crappy stuff made here is better than the crappy stuff made elsewhere...

It depends on the product. I prefer to buy cars made in Japan. I prefer silk made in China. I prefer vegetables grown in California. I depends on what I'm buying -- I like getting my money's worth.

Not necessarily. I buy quite a bit of homegrown/made food but it's not something I think about all that much. I do like knowing that my eggs and milk come from farms that are within about 2 miles of my house though