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Though we’ve long been frustrated by the fact that the federal government spends taxpayer dollars on foreign-made goods, we found one recent example of this practice particularly infuriating.

During last year’s 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) purchased 70,000 commemorative bracelets for their workers. Unfortunately, these bracelets, which were intended to honor lives lost here in America, were made in China.

The 9/11 bracelets are just the tip of the iceberg.  Due to glaring loopholes in existing Buy America legislation, federal agencies have spent billions on foreign goods and services, including $500 billion in the past five years alone.

This is unacceptable. Luckily, a bill was recently introduced in Congress that is a step in the right direction: The Invest in American Jobs Act (H.R. 3533).  It will help ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to buy American-made goods for federally funded highway projects by giving preference to American-made steel, iron and other materials.  Click HERE to tell your member of Congress to support the Invest in American Jobs Act.

Tell your representative that it’s time to stop outsourcing federal purchases, and to focus on creating American jobs. Urge them to co-sponsor the Invest in American Jobs Act, a great first step toward keeping federal purchases American-made.

Together We Can Keep it Made in America.

Amid prolonged, painfully high unemployment, ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer for the past year tirelessly advocated a simple solution – buy American-made products.  She clearly explained the reasoning: every American dollar spent on an American-made product helps create an American job.

Defying Sawyer’s admonition to search for “Made in America” tags, California set a record for using government money to create jobs in China. The Golden State awarded a contract for the new Bay Bridge that created 3,000 jobs in China for five years – a period during which the state’s unemployment rate persisted at two percentage points above the nation’s already high average.

Now there’s an antidote for California’s stupidity. It is legislation called the Invest in American Jobs Act.  Championed by U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall, (D-W.Va.) and Senators Sherrod Brown, (D-Ohio), Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), it would strengthen existing requirements for buying American products when federal tax dollars pay for construction of highway, bridge, public transit, rail, water systems and aviation infrastructure equipment.

To create 200,000 American jobs, Sawyer has challenged Americans to spend just $64 of their $700 in holiday purchases on American-made gifts. Imagine the American jobs that would be created if “Made in America” were stamped on every single part of all $59 billion in infrastructure projects the federal government funds in a typical year.

That’s what Rahall, Brown, Casey and Stabenow want. Unless American-manufactured components aren’t available or would be outrageously more expensive, these lawmakers believe American tax dollars should buy American jobs while financing American infrastructure.  So they propose to expand the existing “Buy American” requirements and close loopholes that allow governors like California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger to circumvent the rules.

Schwarzenegger contended that California would save $400 million on the $5.1 billion Bay Bridge if it hired a Chinese firm to build steel decking and a 52-story tall support tower and ship them 6,500 miles to San Francisco.

This turned out to be a “you get what you pay for” lesson for California. The state should have been forewarned by years of publicity about problems with Chinese-manufactured products. For example, toxic drywall imported from China sickened American homeowners, corroded pipes and resulted in hundreds of millions in successful damage claims against the Chinese firms that fabricated it. Or there was the tainted blood thinner Heparin from China that killed at least 81 Americans. (more…)

One thing you can do to help bring back American jobs is look for goods made in America when you shop. People are tired of going into stores and seeing nothing but stuff from China! This holiday season your family, relatives and friends will appreciate it even more when you give an American-made gift.

Here are some resources and American-made gift ideas:

See all kinds of American-made products at USAb2C.com. From their website:

America’s largest Internet Mall for American Made Products including American Made Toys, Tools, Shirts, Clothes, Baby, Shoes, Slippers, Towels, American Made Jeans, Boots, Bikinis, Electronics, Clocks, Bird Feeders, Furniture, Books, China, Backpacks, Socks, Dolls, Hats, Apparel, Tablecloths, Blankets, Pet

Products Made In The USA – America

Over 6,000 American Made Products!!

New Balance: “New Balance is the only athletic shoe company that continues to prove high-quality athletic footwear can be produced competitively in the United States. We are committed to American workers. More than 80% of these shoes are assembled in the U.S., helping New Balance to employ over 1,200 U.S. manufacturing workers.”

Loggerhead Apparel: “Loggerhead Apparel will provide top-quality, American-grown, South Carolina-made clothing at a fair price. Ten percent of the revenue gained from the sale of all Loggerhead Apparel shirts will be donated directly to local causes supporting the conservation and protection of the Loggerhead.

In addition to supporting the Loggerhead, Loggerhead Apparel will also support the local textile industry, because no part of the production process will take place outside of the United States.”

Diamond Gusset Jeans: “Genuine. Original. Always 100% American made. Diamond Gusset Jeans. Celebrating our 25th year.” See Looking For America.

Step2 Toys: “The Step2® Company, LLC, headquartered in Streetsboro, Ohio, is the largest American manufacturer of preschool and toddler toys and the world’s largest rotational molder of plastics.” See their Creative Play Plus blog.

Okabashi Shoes: “At Okabashi we believe that technology and design can be utilized to deliver a great product to the consumer at a great value, without shifting U.S. jobs overseas. Okabashis are proudly made in the United States in Buford, GA and shipped worldwide from there.”

American-made iPhone accessories from Insanely Great: “Based in Menlo Park, California, Insanely Great Products, Inc. was created to design and build great products in America.” There’s more, here is a bit, and go read the rest:

We believe that a mistake has been made the last few decades in outsourcing too reflexively when many parts and complete products also can be made locally in the United States. It has become conventional wisdom to outsource just about every manufactured part, with the idea of U.S. manufacturing somehow viewed as practically quaint, a part of our legacy, rather than our future as a country. As happens with so many trends, we believe this one has overshot the mark, and we plan to develop an infrastructure of small, agile, distributed manufacturing units, able to rapidly meet changing demands and provide mass customization that makes at least a beginning step in starting a new trend.

Small, intelligent and agile manufacturing in America just might be what it takes to create a new source of employment to begin to reverse the outflow of manufacturing jobs.

John Briggs blogs on Made in America topics and U.S. companies at simplyamericandotnet — “Putting our Extended American Family Back to Work”

Note: I flat-out stole a lot of this info from the manufacturethis blog. I feel no shame for it.

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Johnson also is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project.

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Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson

The Chinese invasion tells us the true problem is that America is no longer willing or able to invest in its own future.  

Many economic Nostradamuses have long predicted that the epitaph on America’s tombstone will ultimately read, “Made In China.” But casual observers probably didn’t think the funeral procession would happen this fast. In the last year, though, most have wised up. Thanks to a spate of mind-blowing headlines, we are learning that the Chinese invasion isn’t just a distant possibility — it’s happening right now.

First, in February, ABC News reported that almost every Americana-themed trinket sold in the Smithsonian Institute is made in China. Then news hit that San Francisco is importing its new bay bridge from China. Then came the New York Times dispatch about the Big Apple awarding Chinese state-subsidized firms huge taxpayer-funded contracts to “renovate the subway system, refurbish the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River and build a new Metro-North train platform near Yankee Stadium.”

Astounding as all of that is, it was quickly topped by news last week reminding us that the new Martin Luther King monument in Washington was designed by a Chinese government sculptor and assembled by low-wage Chinese workers. (more…)

Last Thursday, President Obama suggested that voters give Congress an earful on the horrible state of the economy. He was right to do that. There is plenty that Congress can do to spur private sector job creation that would not swell our federal budget deficit.

Taken together, these steps would provide a significant boost to the productive sector of the American economy. Creating one manufacturing job will support four or five other jobs in the economy, which is why it makes sense to adopt a coordinated manufacturing policy which would include the following steps:

• Establish a national infrastructure bank to leverage capital for large-scale transportation and energy projects.

• Reshape the tax code in a revenue neutral way to provide incentives for job creation and inward investment. (more…)

When you’re reaching for a beer, why not buy union-made?

Here’s a brief list of beers and ales made by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the International Brother of Teamsters (IBT), the United Autoworkers (UAW) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). If we’re missing any, let us know at info@unionprivilege.org.

(more…)

I opened up my Yahoo account when I got off work and was greeted by an article from the New York Times about how the State of California is outsourcing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project to China.

Outsourcing has become an everyday occurrence. Big Businesses and governments like this tell our American citizens and workers exactly what they think about them every time a project like this is sent overseas. According to the article, the California government saved around 400 million dollars by sending our jobs overseas.

This type of action should be considered criminal.

The state of California contracted a Chinese company that pays their workers less than a dollar an hour, and works them for more than 100 hours per week to steal 3000 jobs from qualified and competent American Workers. Their safety concerns were so great that they had to ship 250 consultants, government employees, and contractors to Shanghai. (more…)

Perhaps we are taking the wrong approach with this BUY AMERICAN. We are trying to have our elected officials in Washington, D.C. address the issue. Maybe we should meet with friendly state legislatures and have them address the issue from a state perspective. Every state in this great U.S.A. has products within its borders. Why not buy them and use them in the respective states? Or, my god, wouldn’t it be great if states actually talked to each other and said, “Hey, we make that here in our State.” Most every state legislature has a gift shop. Wouldn’t it be great if they sold things made in this country or even in their state? Just my opinion; I could be wrong!

Ron Pickering
Brattleboro, VT
Retired USW Sub District Director
Maine, NH and Vermont ,District 4

(more…)

I don’t know how long veterans, new graduates, and minorities are going to put up with 20% unemployment for their sectors, and jobs keep going overseas making the rich richer and creating a new class of the working poor.

If they don’t go overseas, employers get H2B visa workers to work for them. Check out the shipyards in Louisiana.  Unions need to be pushing for America First. The global economy is hurting us.  And it will hurt the Third World soon enough for we are the buyers of their goods. When we fail to keep a 3% unemployment rate, wages will fall and poverty will run rampant. Then we cannot pay.  Let them see what they can sell their products for in China or Brazil when those become the buying countries.

You should study what happened after World War II. The vets marched on Washington D.C. (with weapons), and the GI Bill was passed, and companies were compelled to give the veteran his old job back and to employ those who fought for us while the factory owners and their sons stayed at home.

Kent Hammond
Author of the new book Terrorist Inc.
Raceland, La.

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By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

House leaders deserve praise for fighting for working people by launching a “Make It In America” initiative which they officially unveiled this week. The country still badly needs an immediate job-creation effort, but this is a very important longer-term initiative for reviving America’s manufacturing base and restoring our competitiveness in the world economy. Good work!

Manufacturing is the core of our country’s income. Making things that we sell is how we earn money to buy things that others make. This is why it is so important to restore America’s manufacturing base and the infrastructure that supports it. People want to go into a store and have a choice to buy things that are made here.

This week these important bills made it to the House floor: (click through for details)

• National Manufacturing Strategy Act
• Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing and Export Assistance Act
• End the Trade Deficit Act (more…)