jsm on Nostr: That is an interesting point. I had forgotten that people's choices are often ...

That is an interesting point. I had forgotten that people's choices are often intermediated through stores. There are two things we still need to remember. Those stores stock what people buy. If people were consistently choosing to buy American products they would stock more American products. Second, with online shopping you can buy directly from manufacturers. Take my two most recent online purchases for example, a bike tube and a pen. For the bike tube, I had no idea where in the world it was made. All I knew is that it had the best reviews for the lowest price. When I just checked, sure enough it's from China. Or the pen, it's German and was shipped directly.

In the first example I purchased purely from merit and ended up with a Chinese product, and in the second I purposely chose a foreign product over any other domestic competitors because the Germans, Japanese, and Taiwanese are the only countries that can make a nice pen to save their life. The best example of this is cars. American car manufacturers got out-competed fair and square and now an American car is something I would personally avoid.

All to say, big box stores aren't unilaterally deciding what people must buy, and "Made in America" can sometimes be good, America has generally moved up in the world economy to performing higher skilled labor instead of everyone being factory workers.