The outsourcing of American manufacturing

This is not the first time I have written an article on the outsourcing of American manufacturing and services to foreign countries.

To answer the above stated question, yes America is oblivious to what is happening to her economy, society, standards, and its people because of foreign outsourcing. We, as Americans, run many risks because of the utilization of off shore manufactured goods and raw materials. I have come to this conclusion about outsourcing; through an unfortunate and rude awakening, this reporter has discovered that as hard as overseas manufactures and service providers may try, their products are inferior to domestically manufactured goods and services.

Printer papers, which fail archival durability tests, are imported and competing with American made paper such as Kodak paper, which is an excellent printer paper for archival purposes, whereas it's overseas equivalents are dull and manufactured poorly, not able to withstand the test of time.

In the same venue, toilet papers manufactured in China, do not meet our plumbing standards, it does not dissolve properly, clogging our plumbing and fouling our septic tanks, thus causing us millions in unnecessary repair bills every year.

This fact that most foreign products are either inferior or sub-standard is apparent in some imported automotive products such as car batteries. Automobile batteries manufactured in China find it difficult to withstand some of our more severe weather conditions, such as the summers we have in Arizona, American car batteries seem to hold up better under those harsh conditions than their Chinese competitors.

Also in the area of semiconductor diodes for automobile alternators, they seem to lack the endurance necessary to survive the natural climatic extremes found in our nation's weather. Chinese alternators when subjected to extremes in climate do not stand up to extremely low or high temperatures, which affect the rectifier diodes in these low-grade alternators. As a rule, American alternator manufactures use more substantial material when creating their diodes and they also use better heat sinking to protect these devices from those extremes in heat.

The simple fact is; the Chinese are trying to cut corners in their manufacturing and business practices and care more about the profits than they do about the quality. Consequently, foreign products are as a whole inferior in quality and less durable than American made products, which are subjected to years of research and field-testing.

Another area where outsourcing falls short is in the area of intellectual services, such as telephone-based business, technical and product information. There have been many times when I have called to find a solution to a problem concerning some product I had just purchased, or billing information, and it has been on the odd rare occasion that I have received the help, which has made me feel satisfied. And by the way I know I am calling India.

Other forms of intellectual outsourcing are legal brief and motion development, Indian lawyers who are using English as a second language and who have not studied law as a primary legal system are writing legal documents for pennies on the dollar. Fortunately, most American lawyers use local houses for such services because they do not trust the work being done by these overseas shops.

On a sad note; this tragic news comes coincidentally at the time of my writing this article; the pet food tragedy which has been plaguing our nation this past week. I hate to say I told you so but this is another case of inferior products coming from foreign sources. We are a superior manufacturing nation, whether it is agriculture, machining, electronics, or transportation, so why are we relying on foreign manufactures who do not have our best interest at hand? A large pet food conglomerate in Canada, another foreign corporation, is responsible for these pet food problems. Here again we are vulnerable and at the mercy of yet another foreign corporation. And besides why were they not buying our wheat gluten, don't we grow wheat? We must rely on our own talents for the important things we need to run our society. This tragic situation with the faulty introduction of AMINOPTERIN (rat poison) into the Chinese wheat gluten is just another example of how shoddy the Chinese are when it comes to doing business and Canada you are not doing much better it seems. Their governments and their business practices do not have the checks and balances our system has. We are capitalists; that means if you introduce a faulty product to our society or marketplace someone is going to sue your ass off, blunt and simple.