Would you be willing to pay more for a tool made in the USA over an identical one made “over there”? I happen to like Porter Cable tools, partly because I think it’s a quality tool and partly because it’s made in Tennessee (even though that’s Gore’s home state, we’ll still consider it part of USA). But I believe that only their corded tools are made here, whereas all the battery ones are made in Taiwan.
So, if there were two identical tools available, same manufacturer, same specs, the only diffeence being one was foreign and one was local, would you be willing to pay a premium for the local tool? Since it’s my quesiton, I’ll weigh in with my answer first…I would be willing to pay a premium of 10%.
Replies
I'll up yer 10% to 25%.
I'll see your 25% and raise you one POS Ryobi detail sander that I won as a doorprize.Jules Quaver for President 2004
In the past I would buy USA if they were the same quality and Price. Now I will pay more if it is made in the USA and actively avoid imports if a quality American toll is available.
Thats a tricky question....what constitutes made in the USA? Parts made here? Tool assembled here? What if its a Japanese company hiring American employees to make parts and assemble tools here?
Were it 100% Made in the USA, I`d probably pay 10%-15% more. (So long as it was quality to begin with)
J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
"DO IT RIGHT, DO IT ONCE"
Cant really call it gores state, he didnt carry it in the election lol, thats got to hurt
Gotta go with the USA tools.
Thats like saying Harleys are American made....half the parts come from Japan.
Be well
Namaste
andy
It's not who's right, it's who's left ~ http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
So far as I last saw....the plant was still in York!
JeffBuck Construction Pittsburgh,PA
Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite
i'm thinkin you dont know what your sayin dude.about the harleys.work on them all the time jap #### you will find but 99%is milwaulkee iron
Edited 12/6/2002 7:20:03 AM ET by mrmojo
I really think people are the same all over the world. Materials and design are the differentiators.
You can design a good tool and spec good materials and with good management, they could be made anywhere.
Look at the so called 'Japanese' cars. Most are now built in North America by the same people that build the big three's trash, but are ten times better in quality and design.
That said, are the tools you are looking at built with good quality steel or plastic? Are the designs aimed at durability and ergonomics? I agree most US tools are better, but not because of where they are made, because of how they are designed and made.
Some folks swear by overseas premium brands like Fein. I look at them and admire their intelligent design and craftsmanship too. I just happen to know that US sales and marketing companies will never have the imagination to try that hard. It's far cheaper to spend the money on a sexy ad campaign than to make a good product.
Without getting into foreign policies and politics in general, part of my buy-USA mindset is to keep Americans employed in fields other than telemarketing and dotcoms. Good point on the Hondas et al. Same for 'assembled in USA of fereign parts'. I think the Hondas qualify for made in USA but the 'assembled here-made there' do not. And Boss makes a good point about the country of origin. When I was a kid, made in Japan was a sign of cheapness, now it's generally quality stuff. Avoiding politics again, I personally have no proof about prison labor, either proving or disproving its existence, it just seems that Chinese tools are poor quality and the American manufacturing community is being stiffed right along with the consumers of qualty products. But as long as the CEO's and CFO's are looking for every available penny of profit, offshore suppliers are going to win.
That's kinda a hard question. I don't object to ALL tools made overseas. ie: I don't mind something made in Germany as much as I do one made in a prison in China.
The 10% number I've seen thrown around in this thread is probably fairly accurate.
When you have a lot to do in a day, it's always best to get your nap out of the way first. [Ann Landers]
El......If any tool was made entirely in the U.S. I would pay 50% more than its competitor. I'm a "sucker " for the "Made in the U.S.A." and the flag. Hope some brilliant marketing director and manufacturer sees this .
I'll agree here. What I've never understood is why many manufacturers don't advertise the Made In the USA better. I understand hiding the made in china label in small print on the back of the package, but why do US manufacturers do so.
A few put a big flag and made in the USA on the front. I think any domestic tool manufacturers would be wise to do so. It definately would help sway me into purchasing their product. Plus make it stand out on the shelf.
But hey, I work in manufacturing, and don't speak Chinese, maybe I'm biased.
Well, it's a sticky subject, so I'm going to put my foot right into it. I used to be a lot more caught up in the Made in USA thing, but seeing things like Stanley renting a mailbox in another country and avoiding taxes makes me feel a lot less loyalty to some of the "American" companies out there. I think that the reason that a lot of companies aren't putting the made in USA stickers on their stuff anymore is that they don't want to bring too much attention to themselves as far as just how and where they are doing business. I'm at the point that my number one concern is quality, followed closely by price. Country of origin would only come into play as a tiebreaker if the first two were equal.
I kinda agree with you, but I don't think that was the intent of the thread.
My understanding of it was that there was more concern for quality and workmanship in the US, and Americans were employed in the manufacturing process. It wasn't so much about where the company headquarters was.
I have mixed feelings about the tax avoidance thing. Seems like we had a rather heated discussion about that while back? No sense sidetracking this discussion by stating that all over again."Lots of people talk to animals," said Pooh. "But...Not very many listen"
>> ... more concern for quality and workmanship in the US ...
That's not they way I read it. The first message said " ... if there were two identical tools available... " I read that as meaning identical in quality and workmanship as well as functionality. Of course I'd pay a premium for a better quality tool. I think most of us here would. The real question is would you pay a patriotism premium for an identical tool.
I wouldn't. If the American tool makers can't produce tools efficiently, then the resources they're using, including the labor force, should be redirected into goods and services that America is still better at. Paying a premium for domestic tools keeps those resources in the tool industry and deprives all Americans, including the tool makers' employees, of the more valuable goods that would be available if the resources were properly allocated.
The thing that has concerned me for the last couple of decades is how the U.S. has exported so much of it's toolmaking capacity. I'm not talking about finish sanders or screw guns; I'm referring to the serious stuff like machine shop tools, tool and die making technology, that kind of thing.
Our supremacy in that area enabled us to ramp up quickly in WWII to manufacture aircraft by the tens of thousands, ships by the thousands....(I believe it was in the Bremerton shipyards where a Liberty ship was built from keel to launching in 5 1/2 days!!).
Could we put our manufacturing base together again like that, if necessary? I wonder. Walk into a modern machine shop today and most of the stuff you see will be imported ("throwaways," people in the business call them, because they're inexpensive and when they wear out, out they go). Go into an older facility and the old Cincinnati's are still plugging along.
We've gradually entrusted our current allies (who may very well not be our allies in 10 years) with some of our most fundamental capability.Jules Quaver for President 2004
Actually, IMHO, backed by some knowledge in the area of industrial machining, I was thinking and training as a machinist, I think you are wrong. Even as late as the Korean conflict we still had an industrial base. Most of that capability is gone. We no longer have the machinery, materials refining and most critical of all a large enough pool of trained and experienced personnel to rapidly spin up training of technicians much less actually get the jobs done.
We don't produce enough steel to reproduce the liberty ship saga. Never mind that modern ships, not to mention military platforms, are more complex. We wouldn't have the shipyards if we had the steel. We wouldn't have the needed welder, shipfitters, marine electrician or any number of other specialized workers to do the job.
The same is true in aircraft, large missile and tank production. These production lines, and the lines that feed materials, presently produce a few dozen, at best, units a year. Doubling or tripling these amounts would take years.
Two dynamics make this more and less critical. The general course of major wars, discounting insurgencies, is that they are getting shorter in duration. On the other hand major conflicts use and destroy greater numbers of these expensive resources. An entire years worth of production can be destroyed in an afternoon. Research losses in the Arab - Israeli wars, Falklands campaign.
When we tried to rescue the hostages in Iran the services had to strip all available assets, helicopters were a major problem, from other organizations to equip the force we cobbled together. The unfamiliarity and lack of inter-operability problems were the largest cause of the failure of the mission.
In WW2 and to a lesser degree in Korea we could call up thousands of US flagged ships to support assault fleets of hundreds. Aircraft were numbered in the thousands. The days of ships to the horizon and aircraft that block the sun are gone. It would take, by one estimate, ten years and a massive investment to get the industrial base back. Once back, only then, could we replace the projected losses in a major and protracted war in a timely manner.
We could support a maximum effort for only a month or two. After that we would rapidly have to depend on weapons, ground troops with basic rifles and mortars with only a few improvements, that served us in WW2. Without a merchant marine how we get supplies to them remains a problem with no answer.
I don't know enough about the strategic reserve and strategic manufacturing issues to express an opinion. People whose opinions I trust tell me that it's a smokescreen for the protectionists, that at the national level, the groups who lobby to limit imports for strategic reasons are actually less interested in the strategic issues than they are in limiting imports to "save" American jobs. I'm NOT saying that anyone who has posted here addressing the strategic issues is insincere about his concerns. I think it's possible to be concerned about the strategic issues on their own merit, without lumping them in with the protectionists. I'm sorry I can't pass along the arguments of these people I trust, and right now I can't even tell you who they are. (CRS Syndrome)
Leaving the strategic issues aside, looking only at the economic issues, I have to vote with Winston Churchill. Sixty some years ago he said (Sorry, no reference on this either. I think it was in his history of WWII, but I was also reading other things of his about the same time, so maybe not.) nothing new had been written on the subject of free trade since 1830. That's right, 1830, not 1930. And the consensus of non-Marxist economists since 1830 has been that the countries which erect barriers to imports impoverish themselves, and countries which do not erect barriers to imports enrich themselves.
The problem is that the costs of free trade are concentrated in the industries which compete with the imports, while the benefits of free trade are spread very thinly over the entire population. So the costs, such as unemployment in the auto industry, the machine tool industry, the woodworking machinery industry, etc, are highly visible and easy to add up, while the the benefits, the money saved by the buyers of import cars, machine tools, and woodworking machinery, are nearly invisible and very difficult to add up. Even less visible are the new investments made with the money saved, bringing new goods and services to market.
The situation with barriers to trade is the exact opposite. The benefits of a tarrif, or a quota, or a price support level, or a dumping price threshhold, or a tax on displacement, etc, are concentrated in the industries being protected, while the costs are spread very thinly over all the purchasers of the protected products, whether they buy the domestic product or the import. The benefits are easy to see and add up. The costs are difficult to see and add up.
It's not hard to see why protection is politically more popular than free trade, even though it is provably injurious to the economy. The really amazing thing is that we have been able to do so well in eliminating trade barriers in the last 25 or 30 years, despite the popularity of protectionism.
If the two products were equal in every way the American one would HAVE to be more $......just look at the labor rate Americans command vs. the countries where our "American" manufacturers actually have much of their tools sourced.
Actually, I often look at the "Made in America" tag as a warning. Sorry, but I've taken apart too many American cars, and I've seen the slap it together engineering and assembly. Sure, the cars might last, but they do so by making parts that are overweight, rather than elegantly engineered. More is less.....too often the American solution.
Trying to actually assertain where the tool is made is very difficult. Also, the typical American company has become obssively focused on the next quarters profit statement....not a good thing for long term quality.
I will pay zero extra based on the "Made anywhere" tag. Sorry.Jake Gulick
[email protected]
CarriageHouse Design
Black Rock, CT
>> ... the American one would HAVE to be more $. just look at the labor rate Americans command ...
Yeah, but prices aren't set by the manufacturers costs, they're set by the market.
Plus, labor rates alone don't mean that much. You'd be surprised at some of the things that are still manufactured here despite foreign competition. If an American machinist and his CNC machining center can make more parts than N number of Chinese machinists on their 1950's technology lathes and mills, the American manufacturer can pay N times as much and still come out ahead.
I just saw something in a new story about this.
I forget the exact numbers, but Chinese productive was ONLY about 3% of US productivity. But they labor rates where about 2.5% of US. So they did have a small edge. But that is not much. I dont' know if that was for all types of manufacturing or some some area.
Productivity is a great ruse.
If we took the productivity drive to it's logical conclusion, General Electric would have only one employee. A really productive one, no doubt.
This is the ugly result of capitalist thought. Little do these people realize that return on investment is also contingent on having paying customers. If you crank out crap and dump it into a marketplace of unemployed former customers, you can kiss your business goodbye.
Perhaps these companies are counting on the new Chinese consumer economy to keep them a float.Women and men of wit are dangerous tools,And ever fatal to admiring fools.
- John Wilmot second Earl of Rochester
I don'y get your statement. Productivity is what makes for a higher standard of living for all people. If I can use a miter saw and a nailgun and my competition uses a handsaw and a hammer. I can do work faster, better, cheaper and still charge less than the competition. I make more money, the customer gets a better deal, the tool manufacturer makes a profit on the tools.
Taking productivity to "its logical end" is not really logical, everything has a balance (supply and demand for a dumb example). Supply and demand find a realative balance naturally through various market conditions. As foriegn markets grow,so will the demand for American products. As foriegn workers see the value of their work they will demand (in a realativly free market system) higher wages - making it less benificial to move factories oversees. Productivity is only useful if there is a demand for the product, so increasing productivity won't wipe out the workers, just like supply won't overwhelm demand.
Yes Paul,
My attack on the productivity argument was to reflect on how it is used as a means to an end. Increased productivity does put workers on the street. While I don't suggest that unnecessary workers are kept busy just to stay on the payroll, I do think moving a plant to China in the name of productivity effects the workers here.
Yes, somebody pointed out that Chinese productivity is lower and these moves are due to lower wages, however, productivity is measured in terms of output per dollar invested. Hence lower output at grossly lower cost is still a productivity gain.
The movement of capital you point to in your supply and demand example is correct by economic theories and even reality. I just think we need to be a little smarter than this. Do we really want to continually be uprooting communities, workers, lives? These companies don't give two sh*ts about the greater effects of their business planning. They look for customer loyalty, yet they are too shortsighted to weather a downturn and show some loyalty to their workers.
Eventually their shortsightedness will come back to haunt them. They can't have it both ways. There are even funds that refuse to buy stock in companies like that. Furthermore, how many people here will think twice about buying a B&D tool after they split the country? Women and men of wit are dangerous tools,And ever fatal to admiring fools.
- John Wilmot second Earl of Rochester