True but due to the growth in populism in America, the average rural white guy wants to be the guy making these products in order to sell it to us. dumbest concept but hey thats the GOP today. DEI for white guys via a manufacturing jobs program.
The fact that you can hop on Temu or Aliexpress and order a modular freezer or washing machine
for less than 100 bucks is a blessing in itself. Wanting to trade this in for making more expensive washing machines here is.... a choice.
I'd argue this is a backwards policy for America. Pure foolishness fed to us by megacorps. We should take pride in paying more as a society if it props up the society.
I didn't realize this until I personally started traveling to other countries and realized how much more common things cost there relative to here. For example I recall speaking with an Egyptian storekeeper about how impossible it is to get just a normal t-shirt for less than 20 US dollars. And this was a regular store, not some touristy spot either. I was curious how locals could afford that considering that 20 US dollars for a single t-shirt is 10% of their local earnings in a month. And I explain to the guy, that where I come from that $20 is enough to buy three or four shirts at a store of his caliber.
After hearing this, the shopkeeper started laughing in belching for 2 minutes straight. After finally finishing his laughter, he asked me, "but how will we feed the people?"
The dude went on to explain to me that the Egyptian silk industry exists till this day solely because the Egyptian people choose to buy only their clothing, creating a base for the local populace; which then allowed them to export using the proceeds from local production.
On the same trip, I had asked a taxi driver why there are so many Chevys on their roads. For example the taxi I was in was an American Chevy Cruze, in yellow. This guy laments to me how American delegations bought off and fooled the prior leadership of his country. This second guy explained, that they used to have their own domestic car company called Nasir. It supported a huge industrial market of cars, buses, and industrial equipment. But in the '80s Reagan's flunkies convinced them that it would be cheaper to import American cars, than keep producing their local Nasir brand. And just like that, the last domestic car company in the entire country of Egypt went up in thin smoke.
