America Needs To Get Back To Making Goods, Not Repairing Overseas Junk

Well, it looks like we will be waiting for health-care reform for awhile now. Since the people have let it be known that JOBS are the priority, the administration and our Representatives have changed tactics.

I think it’s important that we understand, the best way to get people back to work, is to ensure that jobs stop leaving the U.S.  In my profession as a Business Development Specialist, I travel around the state talking to various companies. Many of these organizations have sent work overseas to China or Indonesia. Some of it is for initial manufacturing and some for further processing of goods. One thing that I hear often, is that the quality sucks and improvements must be made once the goods return here. Some companies have set up entire processing areas just to fix the problems coming back.

What I don’t understand is, why they continue to send the work out, knowing what to expect on the return. I think that the low cost of manufacturing overseas is just part of the problem. When we export goods to other countries, we pay taxes and tariffs that drive up the price of the finished product to be sold overseas. That makes our goods much less competitive. When other countries import goods to the U.S.,we make it easy for them by not charging those same taxes and tariffs and therefore Chinese goods have a better price point then American made products.

Having trade relations with numerous countries may be good when considering a diversity of products available to our consumers, but do we really need to have junk flooding the market, which, in many cases is unsafe or unhealthy for the consumer.

What we need to do is make laws that encourage American products to be designed and produced right here in the U.S. Give businesses reasonable tax breaks and incentives to keep jobs at home. Stop overtaxing companies that do well and bring jobs home to the U.S. Make it as attractive as possible to do business here and maybe other countries will start producing here in the U.S., in order to ease distribution and get true quality products.

All I’ve heard lately is that we need to put more money into infrastructure like bridges, buildings and now rail systems. Well from what I’ve seen, the people who get theses contracts, at least here in South Carolina, are using the same people they already had on the employment roles and if they don’t have enough they sub-contract. In reality, there are no new jobs, just some folks getting more hours on the jobs they already had.

We need American to get back to making things, before we become a strictly service nation, where we do nothing but repair products from overseas.