I was cleaning the toaster today and when I turned it over to shake out the crumbs I happened to notice that it had been made in China. Big surprise, right? Well, I had just finished installing one of those Over-the Range-Microwaves made by a proud American company called Whirlpool (who incidently once a had a plant in my home town) only to find that it too had been made in China. Is nothing made in America anymore?
So, I decided to take a walk through my house randomly selecting items and chronicling the country of manufacture. I noted the brand name and which country I believed they were based.
Here are the results: sorted by product type
(food excluded)Observations:
I was surprized by the fact that Japan factored so little in my informal survey. Apart from that it seemed painfully obvious that China and SE Asia is manufacturing most of our durable goods and where the USA is still holding strong is in consumer products. But the consumer products area is dominated by just a few companies. It wouldn't be a stretch to see these companies also start to move their manufacturing over seas if they haven't already. America still has a large manufacturing base but if we look at the trajectory of our manufacturing output and that of China and SE Asia I think the graphs would be rather apalling.
CW
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