In the 1990, one of my colleagues, a software engineer, was adamant about boycotting Chinese products. At the time she said that the Chinese were using child and slave labor in their factories, and she considered it her duty to not buy Chinese products. I always respected her for that, and in those years I started looking at “Made in …” labels on products.

Much has changed over the last three decades since. I am currently working on a number of projects. For parts, equipment and tools, I go to Amazon, since I can’t find most of the stuff I need, at least in the sizes and configurations required, in local stores. Just in the last couple of weeks, I have bought garden hoses, pumps, AC to DC converters, angle brackets, shelves, shelf brackets, trash bags, a belt sanding machine and a few other odds and ends.

I am checking the labels, and every product I have bought from Amazon is made in China. Every single one of them. Whether that be electronics, hardware, household items, no matter what, it’s made in China. Our entire consumer economy seems to be based on manufacturing in China.

I realize that this is not a current or recent trend. Thirty years ago, before Amazon existed, one of the statistics I remember reading, was that 80% of all goods sold at Walmart were made in China. At the time, Walmart was the main supplier to the American middle class. This trend of outsourcing our manufacturing to China has been going on for decades and we haven’t done anything to stop it – probably the opposite is true.

I don’t think Trump’s tariffs will work. If you need a drill, and nobody in the United States builds a drill, and they all come from China, you’re going to have to buy that one, and pay the tariff. It does not create an incentive to build the drill here. And even if we turned this trend around now, it would take at least several more decades before we’d see tangible results, and we’d purchase products from Amazon that were made in the USA.

I admit that I am not offering any solution here, I am just making an observation of facts that we should all be aware of. We have created a problem for ourselves that simple slogans like Make America Great Again are not going to solve. It will take much more effort, require creativity, and many years of persistent policy action.