Since this whole Wuhu flu fiasco started, I've been trying to buy local more and buy American to help out small businesses since they've been hit hardest. It really hit me how difficult it is to actually procure products sold by small businesses that are made in the US. My hair wax, for instance. It took me a whole day of researching to find hair wax that is made in the US and actually sold by a small business and not some mega corp like Amazon or Walmart.
So I bring this question to you gents. How much effort do you put into trying to buy something American made? If so, how do you go about it?
It depends on the items and availability in a lot of ways. Local small business shopping for me is really limited to video games, guns, restaurants, and hardware store.
I really do more of an avoid communist regimes over buy American. Electronics this is damn near impossible, I think the best I've done there is camera stuff that's made in Malaysia or Japan mostly. Hell, that's just because the Chinese suck at camera gear. I've done well with this on clothing, I have some American items and places like Vietnam and Thailand get into that business quite a bit. Most of my American clothing items was super expensive but the quality is top notch.
Another thing, I have been buying a lot of USA made hand tools in the last year. I have loads of hand tools, a lot of it really nice old stuff but I had a lot of junky Harbor Freight pliers that after 10 years are just making a rusty mess of everything, so I've been upgrading those. It's really easy to find USA made hand tools, but they generally aren't cheap. You have to get into the stuff marketed to the pros, but it's stuff you can use until you die.
General daily-use products, I don't try that much. Although I have sworn off Walmart and Target for close to a year now because of their commie shopping experience. That still leaves Amazon to get my $ of evil though.