Campaign touts 'Buy American'

With no improvement in sight for the troubled economy, many Americans are renewing the call for a commitment to a “Buy American.”

Jim Berns, shop manager for the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, is leading the charge, emphasizing the everyday benefits of buying American-made goods.

“When you buy from another American, that money can come back to you fairly quickly,” Berns said. “If you buy something from China, you might as well throw that money out the window because they’re going to put it in the bank and they aren’t going to buy anything from you or from me.”

Berns has taken his campaign to both the streets and the airwaves as of late, appearing on local television and radio, as well as area street corners, touting his position with handmade signs while requesting passersby to honk “if you love the U.S.A.”

Beth Walter Honadle, a UC political science professor specializing in policy analysis and evaluation, public finance and economic development, takes issue with the current “Buy American” campaign.

“I expect the ‘Buy American’ policy to be about as effective as President Gerald Ford’s ‘Whip Inflation Now’ campaign was back in 1974,” Honadle said. In that initiative, the president exhorted people to save more and spend less and encouraged the wearing of WIN buttons to ‘whip’ inflation.

“The history lesson is that slogans asking people to behave against their self-interest generally don’t work,” Honadle said.

And indeed, some of Berns’ own students admit that adhering to the call to buy American can be challenging.

Seidi Kenneh and Michelle Olden are two of the students who are working with Berns to make signs and get the word out.

“It’s hard to pick something up, say to myself ‘Wow, I really like this and it’s cheaper [than something made in the United States],’” Kenneh said. “It’s hard for me to say I won’t buy it because it’s not made in the United States.”

“The concept is good as long as there are people behind it and we can really get [the campaign] to go someplace,” Olden said. “It will take a lot of people to change our buying system.”

David Brasington, an economics professor specializing in political economies, said “Buy American” could have some success.

“For goods and services that Americans already make the best and cheapest, it won’t have any effect, because we’re already buying them,” Brasington said. “For goods and services that we’re not best and cheapest at, if people follow the campaign and buy American instead of a cheaper or better foreign good, it will help preserve jobs and profits for those companies that might otherwise continue their slide toward going out of business. And people won’t mind the lower quality or higher prices because they get satisfaction knowing they’re helping American companies.”

But Berns doesn’t want his efforts to be confused with pork barrel spending – he isn’t promoting buying American products for the sake of buying American products if they’re not the best quality or most efficient products available.

And concerning products the United States is not prepared to compete on, like electronics, it’s fine, Berns says, to buy foreign-made item, especially if that other country is a trading partner like Canada or Mexico.

“There is some parity in that balance,” Berns said. “The U.S.-China trade imbalance is huge – the United States purchases about five times more from China than China buys from the United States.”

Honadle warns that a concerted effort by government or citizens to buy only American could prompt a trade war.

Furthermore, “In today’s global economy, with goods being produced with component parts from around the globe, it might be interesting just to see how they will define what an ‘American good’ is these days,” Honadle said.

Brasington agrees.

“Today’s American firms are mostly highly international anyway, so a ‘Buy American’ campaign might actually help preserve some foreigners’ jobs, too. Dell computers may be assembled [in the Philippines]; some Fords are made by Mexicans; some Chevrolet camshafts are made in China,” he said.

“But the ‘Buy American’ campaign, if effective, would still help preserve corporate profits and corporate jobs that Ford still has in the [United States], whether or not these are the types of jobs such a campaign is really thinking of helping.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check you the YouTube video made by some of the students who are working with Jim Berns.
Effective? Do you consider the place of origin of the products you buy? Are you willing to pay more for American made products?