Try This the Other Way…

I pulled a story off of the news aggregation sites this week that I think the authors – and probably whoever green-lighted the story in the first place – are looking at backwards. On the face of it, this is an amusing little story about a store in Elma, New York, which purports to sell only products made in America – they call it the “Made in America Store” – which can be seen as mocking people who take the “Buy American” campaign to extremes, mocking trade protectionists in general, or mocking the current state of American commerce (the story carries virtually no electronics and is built into an abandoned Ford dealership, for example) depending on which one you find amusing. However, it struck me that there is at least one, and more likely a whole series, of serious topics being raised by this operation, and that somebody really ought to look into them…

Consider, for example, the primary issue this store addresses: what product categories are still made in the US, and how many of them are competitive against foreign options in either price or quality, let alone both? If there are American industries that are actually superior to the competition in either category it’s probably worth asking why; if there are any that are superior in both measures (and not just because they receive government subsidies or trade protection) it would be interesting to find out if those advantages can be transplanted into other manufacturing sectors. By the same token, if those products are not superior in quality or price (or both) but are simply being featured in the store because of their American origin, it would be interesting to see if the products (or the companies that produce them) can be improved to equal or exceed foreign standards – or if the fact that they are American-made will translate to sales sufficient to keep the manufacturers in business…

Even more interesting, in my opinion, would be the reverse question: which products (and product categories) are no longer made in America, and is there any way we can restore those industries? In some cases it may not be possible to resurrect those industries, and in others it might not even be desirable to do so, but a simple comparison between this company’s inventory and ordering databases and those of a typical general merchandise retailer (like a Wal-Mart or a Meijer) would tell you which American manufacturing sectors are effectively extinct. Meanwhile, a price point comparison would tell you how much of a markup people would be willing to accept in order to purchase American-made consumer products in a wide range of categories in which country of origin isn’t normally a selling point…

Now, I realize that a lot of these points are the sort of abstract operational analysis that could only be of interest to management students and policy wonks; most of the appeal of the Made in America store is just random patriotism and the sort of jingoistic rhetoric that appeals to people during an economic crisis that can be (at least in part) attributed to international market conditions. But if you go to check out the original story on the NPR site , just keep in mind that sometimes the answers to how to change an entire manufacturing sector aren’t found in some industry insider’s secret information, or at the bottom of a huge governmental think-tank study. Sometimes they’re a tourist attraction on the highway near Elma, New York…