How Important is Made in the USA?

[dcyrilc]

There's none in your list made in the USA. Unless of course you use some aircraft or specialty bolts. Except for some specialty steels, NO steel is produced in the US. Where are you going to buy the material except from off-shore makers? It doesn't make any difference if you're making buttons or building a skyscraper, the US doesn't make the steel anymore. It's not here to buy.

Our State specs call for steel forged here in the US. Not sure who makes it, but someone still does.

 

[lostcause]

There's none in your list made in the USA. Unless of course you use some aircraft or specialty bolts. Except for some specialty steels, NO steel is produced in the US. Where are you going to buy the material except from off-shore makers? It doesn't make any difference if you're making buttons or building a skyscraper, the US doesn't make the steel anymore. It's not here to buy.

maybe i'm wrong - i've been out of the industry for a couple of years, but last i knew, we still had a lot of steel mills in this country. after the closing of the several bethlehem mills 10-15 years ago, a large chunk of structural came from nucor in arkansas. i believe northwestern closed in the early 2000's. chapparal was bought by a canadian company, but i believe they still have mills here in the us.

http://www.steel.org/AM/Template.cf...MPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=33824

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&u...local_group&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQtgMwAA

 

[CCWKen]

I didn't say there were no mills in the US. There are still mini-mills that produce specialty steels and alloys. These are the steels needed to meet certain military and private specs. You're not clear on what the "State specs" are. And forged steel could be a process of shaping the steel. The steel could come from anywhere and "forged" in the US. All the stock structural I've seen down here comes stamped "Made in Mexico". The stock re-bar comes from India. That's not to say that there isn't factories around fabricating structural members to order. But I'm betting the A36 steel came from Mexico or Canada.

 

[debushau]

I for one would pay the extra 10% but I doubt very much that a true US made product costs 10% more.

No one really polices whether it's proper to put a "made in usa" sticker on anything. A manufacturer just has to prove that some transformative process was applied to the material. Originally that probably meant taking some iron ore and casting it but many famous "international" domestic manufacturers with extensive outsourced facilities like to take a liberal interpretation. A little assembly and welding is enough. For a complex piece of machinery like a tractor, it's almost impossible to figure out where it was truly made and what exactly "made" means as there are thousands of parts and dozens of suppliers and subcontractors.

With that in mind, it may be better to focus on quality and price and ignore the country of origin sticker. Which is what 95% of consumers do anyway.

 

[mjncad]

I will say this, though.. as Canadians, we take great pride in producing the very best beavers on the market today..


Sean

Talk about a double entendre worthy of any TV sitcom.

Been to a WalMart, ONCE, never been back. Same goes for Harbor Freight. Nothing of interest for me there. 99% of the stuff is garbage. I go to Home Depot around once or twice a year, Only because everyone else is out of what I'm after. I'd rather pay a little more at the local hardware store and keep them in business than spend it at a chain store.

I only go to Wally-World for Krylon spray paint as the one near me has a good selection, and button batteries if my local hardware is out. The local Ace co-op I belong to knows me by name now. I don't buy big ticket items at Ace because of the 'Ace price;' but I do support them with plenty of small items and fuel purchases. The only reason I go to Despot & Doh's (Home Depot & Lowe's) is because they ran the competition out of business and there aren't many alternatives.

On the other hand some of the biggest junk I've ever bought was "Made in the USA" by people who quite obviously really didn't give a crap about what they were building.

So within reason, my priorities are - quality, parts availability, price - in that order.

Tools made by General have always fallen into the crap category, and from what I've seen of King Kutter, they aren't too well made either. My KK carryall definitely was slapped together; but what can you expect for $100 including tax. I would have built my own; but I didn't have my welder yet. Heck, I try to avoid anything with the word 'King' in the name as that seems to mean canine Twinkie quality, and 'King' is the frosting to make it look and sound good.

I'll pay more for a superior product...not necessilarily American. Same price, same quality...I'll take American/Canadian over forein. But then, I've never found much use for low quality tools either.

I buy what's best for my dollar. I don't care where it's made. I work for a Swiss company, I'm not about to quit becuse they're foreigners. Do what's best for your business, build a good product at a price point where you can sell, and take care of your customers.

Would I like all my stuff to be American or Canadian made? Sure; but the reality is that isn't going to happen in our 'Brave new world.' So do I have a problem with quality products coming from America, Canada, Europe, Japan, Taiwan...nope. I do have a problem with Chinese made crap because that's what it is...crap.

 

[JoeinTX]

I hate being the sour grape in this "pole" but the fact is, most Americans buy on price. And what exactly does "10% more" mean? More than what? 10% more than the highest priced alternative? If manufacturing costs go up 10%, the retail level goes up 20%. I don't know how a company can simply pass along 1:1 increases and stay in business. And is that 10% based on production capacity or simply a raw figure?

I'll bet everyone here shops at Walmart. 90%+ of their products are from off-shore manufactures. They didn't get to be Number One in sales by offering quality American products to the up-scale buyers. They got their by selling CHEAP products to low and middle income buyers. (The largest group of buyers.) And, I can't think of a single modern tractor "made" in the USA. It can't be done. Our car companies can't even do it. Between the EPA and labor unions, few US companies can compete on the global market unless costs are reduced. They're reduced by lowering costs in materials or labor. The materials come from off-shore or cheapened in other ways. The labor is reduced by using robots.

I don't know about every one's area but in this part of the country, all the steel comes from Mexico or India. So nothing in the South is truly "made in USA". It's simply fabricated or assembled here. The commerce laws have been changed to allow very lenient manufacturing claims in the US. Made in USA just doesn't carry the weight it used to.

Most here say; "Oh yeah I'll buy American" but when it comes time to lay out the cash, few follow through. The one's that do are not in the major purchasing group.

Let me be the next one because I agree with ya, Ken.

The international economy we live in today is not the result of a conspiracy, George Soros, the EU, international corporate cabals, or intergalactic space aliens from Alpha Centauri. No, it's simply the basic laws of capitalist supply and demand on a grand scale. The West, and in particular North America, has had a voracious appetite for cheap consumer products at cut-rate prices. It's how we are able to get HD TVs, CD players, X-Boxes, smartphones, etc at reasonable prices. Cheap labor in places like China, India, Malaysia, so on makes these things permissable for us in the West. How many of these items would we be buying if the labor costs behind them were 3, 4, 5, 10 times greater than they are now? We would be buying somewhere between 3-10 times fewer, that's how many.

Another factor is the cost of transport/cost of labor. The single biggest factor that could drive manufacture back to our shores would be a dramatic increase in the price of fuel required to move it. Diesel at $8 a gallon makes building iPhones in Szechuan China and then shipping them East a heck of a lot more expensive for the consumer and would make prospects for extra N.A. production capacity a reality. It would also mean that everyone in the USA is paying $8 a gallon to get around. How much extra money does that leave the average American for buying that iPhone? Or anything else? An increase in production or distribution cost is an increase in production and distribution cost..........be it in Indiana or Ontario or Chihuahua or Burma. A tariff is an increase in cost that the consumer pays. A tax is an increase in cost that the consumer pays.

I buy "American" pickups made in Mexico and Canada in whole or part because they are the best option for me. I buy firearms made in Czechoslovakia and Brazil and Florida because they are what I'm looking for at the price. I buy some implements made from Chinese milled steel and Indian parts because they are plenty enough good for what I want to do at the price. I type all of this on a Japanese-owned Toshiba laptop made in China using American processing tech that runs 100% American Microsoft and Google OSs to operate.

It is what it is and that's all okay. It's what makes the world go 'round.

 

[lostcause]

I didn't say there were no mills in the US. There are still mini-mills that produce specialty steels and alloys. These are the steels needed to meet certain military and private specs. You're not clear on what the "State specs" are. And forged steel could be a process of shaping the steel. The steel could come from anywhere and "forged" in the US. All the stock structural I've seen down here comes stamped "Made in Mexico". The stock re-bar comes from India. That's not to say that there isn't factories around fabricating structural members to order. But I'm betting the A36 steel came from Mexico or Canada.

the company i used to work for fabricated in the ballpark of 75 to 100 thousand tons of steel a year over half a dozen fab shops. the bulk of the rolled structural steel shapes came from nucor. i'm talking about wide flanges, stuff ranging from 10 to several hundred pounds per linear foot. thats' not really what i'd call a specialty steel though. generally the wide flange beams produced today are a992, which is a spec that meets both a572 and a36 standards. somewhere around 15 years ago it became the norm to use a572 steel due to the added strength with the lighter section sizes. channel, angle, and plate is still common as a36.

your previous post had an unequivocal no in capital letters saying that we don't make steel in this country any more. i agree that a lot of light angle and channel that i have seen is canadian made where i am. personally i haven't seen mexican made rolled structural, but that's probably mostly geography. nucor's pr on their website claims production capacity of over 26 million tons a year. that's a pretty sizeable number. one thing to understand - availability of steel shapes is reserved months in advance of when it is actually rolled. different groups of shapes are only rolled at certain times of the year, due to the varying needs and the time required to change tooling between shape sizes. just because you haven't seen us made steel doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but instead means that it was easier to get, or more readily available from a canadian or mexican plant.

 

[Builder]

I have a huge steel mile about 10 miles from me. Used to be called Lukens Steel. 10 years ago it was purchased by Bethlehem Steel, which then sold it to "Mital", a foreign company. They're very busy over there churning out really think/wide steel plates. Looks like stuff you'd see in the hulls of big ships. The rail cars go pretty close to my house carrying lots of scrap in and lots of finished product out. :thumbsup:

 

[CCWKen]

Lostcause - Your information is more up to date than mine so I'll bow to you and respect your position. I couldn't view their website as it requires Adobe Flash but apparently, Nucor has made great strides in steel production in the US over the last ten years. They even have a plant here in Texas! (I wonder where it's going?) They've also moved up in rank to the 14th largest pollution generator in the US. Their last EPA fine was $98 million. I wonder how much longer they'll be producing steel in the US?

 

[RadarTech]

Lostcause - Your information is more up to date than mine so I'll bow to you and respect your position. I couldn't view their website as it requires Adobe Flash but apparently, Nucor has made great strides in steel production in the US over the last ten years. They even have a plant here in Texas! (I wonder where it's going?) They've also moved up in rank to the 14th largest pollution generator in the US. Their last EPA fine was $98 million. I wonder how much longer they'll be producing steel in the US?

You have to wonder, if they can pay $98 million in fines how much profit is there in steel? It just might be a steal!

J