People Need Choice To Buy Products Made In America

The American people should have the right to buy American goods manufactured and produced in the good old U.S.A. Making such a choice available will have many benefits, including the creation of more U.S. jobs, an increased tax base and most likely better quality products.

The American consumer today is faced with a major challenge. Even if a shopper wants to buy American products manufactured in the U.S., in many instances this is simply not possible because many of these American brands are no longer manufactured here.

With virtually no competition from within in the country, we, in effect, have created an external monopoly in which certain goods are delivered from a single country source.

This comes with all the attendant problems that monopolies produce. It is no surprise that we have recently witnessed an invasion of our country by an alarming number of foreign-produced goods that are of questionable quality. When you are the only game in town you can lower the quality of goods!

It is time to take back control of our marketplace. We need to provide the American consumer with more choices with respect to product country of origin.

The proposal is simple. The government should require that a percentage of goods manufactured by American companies be produced in the U.S. This may result in a price differential between identical products solely based on country of origin, but it will be up to individual consumers to decide which product to buy - American-made or foreign-made. The power of choice will be in the hands of the consumer, not the manufacturers.

This is not an entirely new concept. Government regulation of manufactured goods dealing with quality and pricing already exists. A case in point is the requirement that a percentage of cars meet some sort of average miles per gallon standard. Why not extend the idea of environmental preservation to that of quality and job preservation in the U.S.?

This is a win-win situation. Consumers will have the ability to decide which products to buy not only by brand name but by country of origin. With more products manufactured in the U.S., more jobs will be created, thereby increasing the tax base. Let's demand that more products with "Made in the U.S.A." labels be available on the store shelves!