Source:  Column: We don’t want an America ‘made in China’ – USATODAY.com.

Let’s subtitle this post to “When Buying American Meant Something”.

There are some rather disturbing things about the source article above. It seems very strange that a U.S. supplier would lose out to the China competitor for the glass used in the new Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site! If there is anything that should be American made it would be at that site! Yet the business went out of country, although through several intermediary U.S. companies, because PPG Industries could not afford to pay the corresponding Chinese salaries to its American workers.

Maybe even more shock is the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington. Here is a quote from the article:

 I was shocked to learn the 30-foot-tall statue of our leading civil rights icon was by a Chinese sculptor, out of Chinese granite, and carved in China. Couldn’t we find an African-American sculptor to carve King’s image out of American granite, with the work being done in the U.S.?

One of the things that we Hoosiers in Indiana pride ourselves on is providing much of the limestone used in the buildings and monuments in Washington DC. I know any of the companies in my neighborhood in southwestern part of the State would have been proud to provide the stone for the monument to MLK. Why did they find it necessary to go to China for the artist and the material for this monument?

I’m just a normal guy but there is something very disturbing about the amount of our products, and now I learn monuments, that are being made in China. Will there come a day where our relations with China fall into a troubled area. We seem to get into troubles/wars so often lately surely one with China is in the future. When that happens and China is making almost everything we use in our daily lives what will happen?  Something not good I am sure…..

I am certainly one who likes to buy my (fill in the blank) a little cheaper; it makes my fixed income stretch a little longer but aren’t we in the U.S. allowed to have anything reserved exclusively for its businesses and citizens? We don’t want an America ‘made in China’.

But what do I know…..