Re: Made in America Week; Why We Need to Close the Trade Deficit; My Random Grocery Store Find

Today, the White House kicked off Made in America week with a product showcase that began at 3:00pm EDT that included the participation of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/president-trump-participates-made-america-product-showcase

All 50 states will be represented in the White House during this week’s events.

Why should you care about supporting Made in America?

Supporting Made in America is a bi-partisan endeavor. By supporting Made in America, we are supporting:

• Local and national economy and communities
• Providing a more optimistic future for our children
• Environmental stewardship – We need to take responsibility for finding solutions to deal with the pollution that comes with industry – it is time to stop outsourcing and offshoring the pollution created from the goods we consume to other countries while pretending to be sinless.
• Fairness and integrity – While people are calling for $15 dollar minimum wages in their own backyard, many want to continue buying cheap goods made by people in foreign nations who sometimes live in extreme poverty and work in very unsafe environments.
• Closing the trade deficit.

Why do we need to close the trade deficit?

The age of American USD global hegemony that has long been enforced through war and tragic loss of life is coming to an end. If we do not take greater measures to exercise self-determination and self-responsibility as individuals and as a nation, we will leave a bleak future for our children. For decades, we have been as thieves in the night, profiting off of the war machine that stands behind our flag, enforcing the value of our faux dollar. We have been importing value in materials and labor from the rest of the world and exchanging it for our Federal Reserve fiat notes.

Our 2016 trade deficit was in excess of $500,000,000,000.

This paradigm will not stand forever, our time may be running short. We as a nation need to produce things of value, and trade with the world on a value for value basis. Our current financial system of things is extremely vulnerable to a black swan contagion event. If we do not rise to the responsibility of trading value for value, even the release of a commodity backed crypto currency could turn us into a Venezuela within a few years after becoming available to the global public. I hold firmly to my belief that our dependency on Federal Reserve [Debt] Notes and our trade deficits represent the two gravest threats to the security and future of this nation.

What can you do to help close the trade deficit?

• Buy and support Made in America products when possible. Although some products might be too cost-prohibitive to easily make the switch, some other products are very similarly priced to foreign counterparts.

• Start exporting products to other countries. I realize this is much easier said than done. I am fairly ignorant on how to actually export products – a big part of why I am building a company that produces consumer goods is so that I can put some skin in the game and ‘learn by doing’. Talk is cheap, folks. I need to figure out how to actually do this successfully before I can provide some actual sound advice of value on this point.

Nearly all U.S. exporters are small businesses:
https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/03/us-exporters-small-business.html

• If starting a small business so that you can export products sounds too daunting, you could consider building/contributing to a blog that provides informational resources on how to export goods, or a blog supporting and highlighting Made in America products. Because of the way wholesaling pricing works, many Made in America products are only able to offer their products direct to consumer; these products may be hard to find even for people who are actively looking for such a MiA product.

• When buying a new car, research which cars are assembled in America and have a large number of American made parts. Do not assume that an American brand is more likely to be more ‘Made in America’ than a foreign brand.

• Stop buying cheap foreign goods new. What do you really need to buy? If you must have it, try to buy it used if possible. Yes, this may cause a temporary retraction of the economy, but it is for the good in the long term. What do you do when your personal finance budget is out of whack, and there is way more money going out than coming in? You take measure to stop/slow the cashflow bleed AND look for ways to increase the cashflow. We as a nation must stop the bleeding AND find ways to create value in order to have a secure future. If you buy fewer cheap foreign goods you will have a bit more to spend on high quality long-lasting American counterpart products. If you can't find an American made counterpart, still opt for quality. Supporting a throw away consumer goods mentality is irresponsible.

My random grocery store find

The sugar brand that I used to buy has unfortunately had to ‘jump ship’ due to difficult industry circumstances, and American grown sugar was going to be very hard to get on the West Coast.

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/01/19/crockett-last-hawaiian-sugar-ship-bids-historic-farewell/

However, the parent company of that brand, ASR Group, has made Florida Crystals, a brand offering American grown and harvested sugar, available for purchase. I had not seen this brand in my local grocery until this last trip - I found it next to their other brand’s sugar in my local Safeway for the same price per ounce as the other brand. The extra cost to me? $0.00. Similarly, there was a locally sourced honey available for the same price per ounce as the foreign sourced honey. As we vote with more and more of our dollars to support American industry, it will become ever easier for us to do so, as American sourced options become more available to us.

We can close the trade deficit. We must close the trade deficit.

I am confident that we, as a nation, can close our trade deficit in under 7 years. Possibly under 3. The only question is, will we choose to? You and I need to exercise self-determination and self-responsibility, and we each need to take personal action to support the ideals we believe in.

An expression of outrage will only ever be that – outrage. It’s fine to express a bit of outrage from time to time, but it is not fine to misconstrue outrage as virtue. A truly virtuous person with a highly moral and upright character is also a person who will exercise self-responsibility to uphold their values and manifest them in their works – their actions. Outrage without good works is simple nonconstructive hypocrisy. Even if we start by only taking baby steps to directly support our ideals, each of those baby steps is a step that will propel us in the right direction.

Let us build up our own houses so that we may have the security and means to help others build up their houses. Let us take the more difficult path and strive to be virtuous people – we have great power to right the wrongs of this world.