Man Blogs About One Year of Buying Only American Made Goods

The United States job market has fallen on rough times, to say the least. A popular, and certainly legitimate, cause that many point to is the ever-increasing practice of outsourcing jobs to other countries, eliminating jobs domestically and ensuring that many new jobs created by companies that outsource will not be seen in the United States, either. Mike Catherwood, a radio and television personality from Los Angeles, is looking to take his own stand on the matter by attempting to buy only products made in the United States for the entire year. It’s not going to be an easy task, as Catherwood himself freely acknowledges.

In a recent post on his blog, Catherwood referenced a New York Times article detailing the production of the iPhone – a process that by and large does not involve the United States. Virtually all of Apple’s manufacturing takes place in China, a practice defended by executives who lauded the “vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers,” adding that United States workers could not compete. Those same executives described that “flexibility” and “diligence” in this way:

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

As Catherwood notes (and, as should be abundantly obvious to anyone who just read that paragraph), that is not rightly called flexibility, or diligence. That is called exploitation. What can be done about it? In the case of Apple, not much, as an exchange between President Obama and the late Steve Jobs illustrates. When President Obama asked Jobs in a meeting with leading technology executives what it would take to bring those manufacturing jobs back to the United States, Jobs simply replied, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

It’s in this corporate climate that Catherwood has launched his ambitious project – one even he admits is not perfect. He acknowledges that purchasing goods with no foreign elements is next to impossible – consider foreign car parts that go into an automobile manufactured in the United States – which is why his aim is to stick to buying things made or assembled in the United States. Credit to him for acknowledging the complexity of the situation, and clearly outlining his goals. Catherwood’s is a statement that could very well see several echoes in a country increasingly frustrated by jobs sent overseas, never to come back.

If you’re interested in following Catherwood’s progress and his musings about jobs and the United States, you can check out his blog, Domestic Journey.