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Made in the U.S.A.: What products are still American-made?

Posted Sep 19th 2007 6:00PM by Peter CohanPeter Cohan RSS Feed
Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Small business

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If you're tired of poisoning your kids with lead-painted toys from China or killing your pets with melamine-laced Chinese pet food, you may be wondering what you can buy that's made in America.

To its credit, China is trying to fix its reputation. Last week, according to CBS News, China's product safety chief Li Changjiang offered assurances that toys made in China would be "safer, better and more appealing. Before Christmas, we will certainly provide children safer, better and more appealing toys. They will certainly like them." To bolster that claim, on September 11th, China signed an agreement to prohibit the use of lead paint on toys exported to the United States.

As I posted in July, I expect that there could be a business opportunity to sell products to U.S. consumers that are made anywhere but China. Then I cited examples of an upscale New York grocery with no Chinese seafood and a New Jersey-based natural producer of premium dog food blended from meat and vegetables. However, I have not seen much in the way of new developments in the last few months.

So what are the choices for those who want to buy products made in the U.S.A.?

It's surprisingly difficult to find companies that actually make their products in America. For instance, you might think that Anheuser Busch Companies (NYSE: BUD) brews its beer in the U.S. However, while it has many plants in the U.S., it also brews in Japan, China and Germany. Hasbro Inc. (NYSE: HAS) makes its Monopoly board game in Waterford, Ireland, not in the U.S. And Wrangler jeans for the U.S. market are manufactured in Central America and Mexico.

I started off looking at companies on the Made in America site -- a show on the Travel Channel. This led me to a long list of companies. While many of the names on this list are headquartered in the U.S., many make some if not all of their products in other countries (to find out, I simply did a Google search on 'where is [product name] manufactured,' which usually led to relevant information on the topic). I decided to strike those names from the list I would write about and focus only on those companies that were fairly well-known brands which as far as I could tell actually made their products in the USA.

With the holiday shopping season nearly upon us, here's a list of 22 products which are made in America:

Do you have other Made In America suggestions? Please comment below!

Update: Thanks to all the commenters for adding new suggestions to the list and for pointing out that some of the ones I listed may not belong. Since Cabela's is a mail order catalog and does not make any products itself, we included it on the list although they are importing products made elsewhere. I stand corrected on Red Wing shoes -- it makes all but a few casual shoes and boots in China so I would take it off this list. If we define Made in the U.S.A. to include companies that manufacture here, buy all their raw materials from U.S. companies, and hire only U.S. citizens as workers, how would that change the list?

How much are you willing to pay for Made in America? On Sept. 24 I wrote a new post asking readers which basket they would buy -- one made entirely in America (most expensive), one made mostly in America (mid-priced) and one made all in China (much cheaper). Cast your vote!

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Tags: American-made products, American-madeProducts, consumers, Made in America, MadeInAmerica, outsourcing, shopping, small business, SmallBusiness

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