Buying American....why is it so hard?

I'm sure that we have all seen that e-mail that is traveling around to Americans. Between June 4th and July 4th do not buy goods made from China. We were sending a message to the companies that we no longer want to settle for the inferior products. I was all for it. Support American workers and keep what jobs that are still in America in America. But there is a catch. Ninety-nine percent of our products come from China. Sure I can do with out that new iPod or DVD player, but what about the things that we do need?

This summer, and into the fall, I plan to ride a bike to school. Great you say, save some gas because at four dollars a gallon it is getting way too expensive to drive the five mile one way trip for a student. So I went bike shopping. I couldn't ride my old bike, it had too much work to be done to even bother with it. I shopped around but ended up settling with a Mongoose Woodland from the local Wal-Mart. I have no idea where the bike was made...since the bike cake pre-assembled and I never saw the box. Since the company originated in California and the booklet was from Wisconsin, I'm Hoping the United States. OK the bike is bought and great. Now the problem is the safety equipment. I needed a helmet and a bike lock. Every one that I looked at was made in China. This pisses me off because things that we really need we have no choice. It is China or nothing. I thought about sending a scathing letter to the companies that made them but would I be heard? Probably not. They send their work to China because supposedly it saves the company money, in turn saving them money. But in reality its all about giving the CEOs a bigger payout. And I would not mind paying a dollar more for an American made product knowing that it is keeping a job for a fellow American.

So I bought the helmet and the lock. What choice did I have? I could have ridden my bike without a helmet. But that would not have been a smart thing to do, or are we trained to think it would not be a smart thing. Did we ever wear helmets when we were kids? Hell no, and we survived. I had to buy the lock. My bike could get stolen. Its unfortunate that we have to lock our things up. We never locked anything up either when we were kids and well, nothing ever got stolen.

What can we do? Since I have been the victim of a job going to China, I am very cautious about the products that I buy. I only buy from China if I have no other choice.

hey B, I'm pretty sure Mongoose bikes are made in Asia now. It used to be that they were American made, but these days they've outsourced to China as well.
As I've told you before, my bike is a Nishiki Japanese racing bike. The other bikes in the family are made in England and Italy. Sadly most of my bike accessories are made in China as well. It's nearly impossible to find stuff built in the good ol' USA these days.
Even my computer is made in China. I remember when you could buy a computer made in the US. That was back in 1997

I think while our government is trying to solve the problem, we can solve it ourselves by just not buying the products from China whenever possible.