Buy local. This is the mantra across the United States and echoed in other countries. Support your local business and community. It’s good for the local town economy and the country. Yes, it may cost more, but it feels good and leads to a stronger community and local businesses.
Spread across communities, it leads to stronger regional economies and states. One could extrapolate that if practiced on a large scale, it could lead to a stronger country.
Yet, when talking about reducing our reliance on foreign imports, the concept of “buy local” seems so much more foreign. “What? I may have to pay more? I may have to buy less?”
That is what I call The Buy American Hypocrisy.
We know that here in the US we have a debt problem. Not just the country, but consumers who get daily Amazon deliveries and order on impulse out of convenience and the inability to simply not spend when advertised to by AI driven marketing. Personal credit debt is at unhealthy levels and to scale, our country is in an even worse situation than the average consumer. We’re trillions in debt with trade deficits that even in the early 2000s, would have seemed like science fiction.
Like a person who has uncontrolled spending and is ruining their personal finances, sometimes difficult and downright hard things need to be done by countries in order to get into better financial shape… in order not to succumb to financial ruin, economic bankruptcy, and being eventually dethroned as a world power. Yes, like throughout all of history dating back to our war for independence, sometimes a period of self-sacrifice is necessary to create a better, healthier and more sustainable greater good.
And that is the crossroads we may be at this point in time. The US imports from China four times what China imports from the US. Yet China’s population is 1.4 billion compared to 347 million in the US. So, who is likely the stronger economy in this transaction?
This isn’t a dissertation about tariffs. It’s about doing the right thing. If “Source American, Manufacture American and Buy American” builds a stronger United States of America… isn’t it worth the extra cost and sacrifice? I can’t answer that for each and every person… I can only present an opinion and try not to be a hypocrite in the process. Practice what you preach, as the saying goes.
Epilogue… AI, technology and how they could help save the situation moving forward.
We think in terms of what we know. Our reference of the future is usually based on concepts we see, hear and feel today. The original 1960’s TV show Lost in Space showed us a robot that looked very limited in its functional ability, even as it warned “Danger Will Robinson!” That was the concept of a robot back then framed in 1960’s limited knowledge. Futuristic movies in the 1980s still showed computers that filled entire rooms. Today, our concept of robots and computers is much different, as we are rooted in what we see, hear and feel now. Our vision is at the next level and more futuristic than back in the 60’s or 80’s. But our concept of the future is still limited by the world around us today. GenZ’s kids and certainly grandkids will find our view of the future was just as limited. I can imagine them saying… I can’t believe you used handheld mobile phones, or what was a web browser. Their future vision will be rooted in what their world looks like, too. That’s the way it goes.
So, where am I going with this? The point is we think of the future in reference to the way our minds are anchored today. We also like to avoid pain, and seek out pleasure. That’s why the average person spends more time per year looking at restaurant menus than their finances.
But what if this new age of AI can help us become less reliant on foreign imports…what if it can be used to help keep things more competitive locally, from sourcing to manufacturing to buying? What if rather than being scared or worried or thinking that things will never get better, we force ourselves to be optimistic, and do some difficult and uncomfortable things now that make the future of the nation better?
What if we turned off the very subjective media “news” on tariffs, politics, taxes and any other fear mongering injected into our society by negative and confirmationally biased media? What if instead we focused our energy on innovation, adaptation and actually constructively solving the problems we have and tried to do it locally (inside the US) with human skill aided by advances in technology and AI?
The thing is, nothing is static. We adopt. We invent. We innovate. We overcome, until the next obstacle… and then we do it again.
Again, this is not a political commentary and I’m not giving an opinion on tariffs. But we know something needs to be done to shape up our economy, have more robust growth and get to a more healthy level of debt and spending in our country.
Could tariffs help be a catalyst to a new paradigm and innovation that creates a more self-reliant, fiscally robust American economy after some uncomfortable adjustment? Source local, manufacture local, buy local. Buy American may be what does that long term even though it’s not cheaper short term. Yes, the road could be uncomfortable and it could involve some pain-in-the-wallet. But there are ways to minimize that too with stimulus through fiscal and/or monetary policy (interest rates, taxes, government spending, etc.). The results could be better in the long run for everyone, from seniors to the next generations. It could solve issues like Social Security funding, unemployment and possibly even the income gap.
Rather than look at what’s happening as the “death knell,” maybe it would be better to reframe it as an opportunity. Wouldn’t that be something…