Graph of the day... made (and bought) in the USA

[Ted King]

‘Made In China’ Accounts For Less Than 3 Percent Of American Personal Consumption Expenditures

[cbelt3]

Well done, Ted.

[MacArtist]

And we wonder where our jobs have gone.

[JPK]

That is a cute graph of pac man eating all the little pie slices, but I don't believe it.

I am an American manufacturer in an industry where there is only one other person really "manufacturing" product in the USA.

I try to "buy american", whatever that means, and still have a closest full of clothes, all my electronics and almost all of my consumer goods from outside the USA. Take two minutes and really look where all the things you use on a daily basis are made!

Even my car, a Hot Dog, Apple Pie - Chevrolet was assembled in Mexico!

Sure, most food, utilities, phone service, mortgage payments, taxes and service related things are from america, Yes those are all personal consumption. I think the concept of that graph is flawed.

I would like to see the graph of non-food goods. I would bet that graph would look VERY different.

JPK

[$tevie]

The first sentence under the graph reads "In part, this reflects the fact that 67 percent of spending is on services rather than goods, and services are 96 percent made in the USA." So JPK, if you read the article you could see they were perfectly frank about it, the problem is that to look at the graph as a stand alone is deceptive.

[cbelt3]

JPK-
You have to think about sources and materials. And what we 'consume'.

Services. Well, that's obvious. We consume a LOT of services. "Healthcare" being the biggie.
Houses... well, duh. Made in America.
Cars... even the 'foreign' cars are assembled in the US in most cases. And much of their parts are made here too.. cheaper than shipping them.
Food...Yep, mostly US. (Sure, there are exceptions)
Medicines... mostly in the US.

And raw materials.. steel, concrete, plastic pellets, yadda yadda.

What we *see* are the cheap consumer products sold at discount stores. And since the US is now addicted to cheap consumer products and cheap electronics and whatnot, we're stuck with a lot of that.

The other factor, of course, is automation.

[OWC Jamie]

Got a copy of the pre-Walmart graph ?
That's the one I want for a comparison.

[Ted King]

The article says, "But even durable goods, which only account for about 10 percent of total spending, are mostly made in America — 66.6 percent to 12 percent for China with the rest coming from the rest of the world." And the information comes from the San Francisco Fed office, so it's not like it's from a source that is known to give out flaky information.

[cbelt3]

Bill, you have to look beyond 'perception' and think about sources of materials and what you spend. It *will* make sense.

[OWC Jamie]

3% doesn't sound like much until you also indicate how many jobs that represents.