What I've Been Reading Instead of Cleaning My House

Friday, August 3, 2012

I'm Proud to Be an American...shopper

So yesterday I did some shopping. I went to the grocery store, so that was pretty easy to get all things American (sorry, no bananas -- they were from Ecuador). I was glad to see that most paper products had a very large and proud "Made in the USA" label on them.

But then my daughter needed to buy a birthday present for a friend. We went to a toy store and much like everything else in there, it was made in China.

Then I had to buy a new charger for one of our devices. I knew that wouldn't be made in the USA. But instead of saying "made in China," it said "assembled in China."

Which brings me to my next question: can you really know where things are made? As I'm reading the labels, many of them don't say where they're made, only where they're "assembled" or even worse, where they're "distributed from." What is that supposed to mean? Aren't ALL things I buy in the United States distributed from the US? And if they're assembled somewhere, where did the parts come from that you're assembling? Very confusing.

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