Made in China sentiment

[Mark Bolton]

We have Range Safety Officers. And when ours blow up, they don’t cut the camera feed, and there’s a public investigation.

One would think.

If you dont think we havent covered up miles of poop and cut feeds, redacted, classified, on and on, well...

We are not clean. No one is.

[John K Jordan]

As a retail small business owner, selling a number of high quality made in China products, I’m curious of any changes in consumer sentiment. Given the current pandemic, will made in China products be more of a deal breaker, or the same? Obviously, if you avoided made in China in the past, you will continue to avoid those products. So assuming product quality hasn’t changed, is Made in China now more of a deal breaker to you?

PLEASE don’t get political.

And thank you for your input.

Sentiments change with the wind. Remember the resentment of France in the '90s? To the point of people calling french fries "freedom fries"?

[Edwin Santos]

I realize the original post was an honest question, but in my opinion, it's also nonsensical. The choice you're asking about is not a choice available to the consumer as a practical matter. The vast majority of products have some aspect, component or piece of the supply chain that is either directly or indirectly associated with China, often in conjunction with other places.

The idea of the association between political views and consumerism pretty much ended well before the end of the last century IMO.
The world's economy is now so intensely intertwined that is is not even possible for the average person to tell where one country's involvement ends and another's begins.
A surprising number of products are engineered in one place, manufactured in one, two or more places in components, assembled in another place, packaged in yet another and finally marketed and sold in the US or wherever.

Besides, if a person were to refrain from buying a particular product because of a perception that it was associated with China, they're probably only going to be hurting the American company outsourcing it not to mention themselves. It would be like not buying a Ford vehicle because you have a beef with the guy that worked on the factory line that made it.

Lastly, the single largest retailer in the world (by a long stretch), Wal-Mart, has proven to us all that it is the very rare consumer that will sacrifice their own financial interest over an ideal (read: consumers are creatures of a short term, self interested nature).

Now if your store is selling pagodas or trinkets that are quite obviously Chinese themed, they could be out of fashion at the moment. But other than that, I do not think pedigree will not be obstacle.

[Doug Dawson]

One would think.

If you dont think we havent covered up miles of poop and cut feeds, redacted, classified, on and on, well...

We are not clean. No one is.

That is true. For a counterpoint, pick up a copy of Kate Brown's book "Plutopia", largely the story of the Hanford nuclear site and the poisoning of the Columbia River. But that was wartime, and moreover we didn't have anybody to steal the technology from (which was largely classified anyway.)

[Mark Bolton]

But that was wartime

Wartime or not. It is what it is. We have more than our fair share of dirty in our past wartime or not. We can nationalize it all we want. We stole technology from plenty, WWII in itself is a testament.

Im not trashing the good ol'...

My point is its an easy position to come from on high and its a really nasty position when we have learned from our labor issues, environmental issues, and we now know beyond doubt that we live and operate in a global environment (the pale blue dot) and we have companies willing for the sake of profit to not only destroy another populatio (or could be argued guide them in the pursuit of destroying themselves) for greed when we know the crap we tell them to flush down their river is going to land in our food supply or float across the jetstream and land on our soil. We have pretty much the richest corporation on the planet supporting prison factories that enact "the company store" that we learned from directly that basically enslaves its workforce with a charge/pay arrangement that is consciously setup to where they pretty much can never get out of the situation. We learned that that doesnt work first hand but it made a bunch of people very rich.

They can of course choose on their own to flush their rivers and workforce down the river.. but we have the pretty much an across the board mindset here that is coaching them and avocating they make the same mistakes we learned from. Its nonsensical.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

You can any level of quality from China or any other country if you are willing to pay for it. The price you are willing to pay for a given object is the controlling factor. Higher prices can result it higher standards/specifications. Take woodworking tools for example, if you have the money you can buy Northfield or if you are an hobbyist like me, you can buy Grizzly or Powermatic or Harbor Freight. The fit and finish will differ between the similar machines but that's a reasonable expectation for the price paid.

The major factors that have contributed to the decline of manufacturing in this country are production costs and environmental standards.

IMO the one thing that this pandemic has brought to light is that certain "things" (masks, other PPE, possibly mediations, and others) should be manufactured in country for that country's national security.

I had a gunsmithing/machinist friend who after selling his machine company in Alaska, retired back to Lewiston, ID and set up a gunsmithing business. He built custom rifles, hunting rifles, benchrest competition rifles. The metal lathe he bought for his shop was made in Taiwan. Two of the competition rifles he built did well enough in the West Regionals and shot in the Nationals. Ron remarked one day when discussing those two guns "You know there are some excellent quality machines coming out of Taiwan if you are willing to pay for them and they still are much cheaper than the US stuff."

[Doug Dawson]

Wartime or not. It is what it is. We have more than our fair share of dirty in our past wartime or not. We can nationalize it all we want. We stole technology from plenty, WWII in itself is a testament.

Just out of curiosity, what are you referring to?

[Gary Ragatz]

Just out of curiosity, what are you referring to?

I don't want to speak for Mark, but at the end of WWII, we brought a lot of German scientists, most notably Werner von Braun, to the U.S. and put them to work on development of weapons for the U.S. military, and later, in our space program. von Braun had an important role, during the war, in the development of Germany's V-2 rocket technology. In this case, I don't know that we exactly "stole technology," but we certainly "acquired expertise." Some believe that von Braun and others should have been prosecuted as war criminals rather than being put to work in the U.S. and (in von Braun's case) being feted as heroes of our space program.

[Doug Dawson]

I don't want to speak for Mark, but at the end of WWII, we brought a lot of German scientists, most notably Werner von Braun, to the U.S. and put them to work on development of weapons for the U.S. military, and later, in our space program. von Braun had an important role, during the war, in the development of Germany's V-2 rocket technology. In this case, I don't know that we exactly "stole technology," but we certainly "acquired expertise." Some believe that von Braun and others should have been prosecuted as war criminals rather than being put to work in the U.S. and (in von Braun's case) being feted as heroes of our space program.

Refugees from the Nazi war machine came to the US of their own free will, arguably, freely contributing their talents and expertise for fairly obvious reasons. To call that “stolen technology” is to take moral equivalence to an unfortunate extreme. :^/

[Peter Kelly]

I'll continue to avoid the "Made in China" label. No need to send more money to our adversaries.

[Edwin Santos]

The whole lot of them are the problem the scales are so out of balance and the population, especially as they age and retire, grovel in support for there meager returns on "investment" scurrying around like mice trying to pack the crumbs in their cheeks.

Damn man, that sounded just like a Pink Floyd lyric.
Straight off of Animals.

[Brian Holcombe]

Doug, Operation Paperclip is being referenced and it is very well documented. Wernher von Braun is a good example, he was a Sturmbannfurhrer (major) in the SS and was head of the V2 Rocket program. I dont know how long the transition period was but he ended up being a very important figure at NASA.

[Doug Dawson]

Doug, Operation Paperclip is being referenced and it is very well documented. Wernher von Braun is a good example, he was a Sturmbannfurhrer (major) in the SS and was head of the V2 Rocket program. I dont know how long the transition period was but he ended up being a very important figure at NASA.

He decided that that was better than being a very important figure in the USSR under Beria. ;^) Wise choice. But beyond that, it was a matter of expediency in the service of his long-term goals, he was apparently willing to overlook a lot of stuff. Complicated guy. Yes the story is well-known.

[Mel Fulks]

Mark, the toilets were thrown away because this government made our companies make lousy toilets !!
Today I saw a neighborhood post offering a free toilet, I doubt it's a Toto.

[Malcolm McLeod]

... is Made in China now more of a deal breaker to you?
...

Forgetting quality, cost, strategic availability, and political niceties, at some point if you or yours own intellectual property (IP = patent, trade secret, copyrights, etc.), who here will be willing to get that product made in China? ...Anybody expect to continue to 'own' that IP for long?