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Comment by bhaskara2 | Hacker News Reader

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bhaskara2·

Stop buying China made goods and educate your family members to do so as well. This is good starting point

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Is that even possible?

What is made in the US that doesn't buy raw materials or partially assembled materials from china?

Sounds like there might be demand for some certification that looks into the whole supply chain of a company, and can offer levels of “Made in the US” certification, bronze, silver, gold, platinum for 100% end to end. Similarly, it would be great for an estimate and certification of carbon emissions of the supply chain for each product.

Made in the USA is a bit...of a pipe dream. U.S. cost of living is higher, so prices for all products would skyrocket.

However, there's MANY countries that are NOT China. We could instead certify products against supporting bad regimes, and using slave / prison labor in the supply chain.

For products where labor is a big input, yeah the delta is probably too high for most unless we get carbon taxes, tariffs, or some other factor that evens the field, but the US also supposedly has quite a bit of highly automated manufacturing. And the purpose is to allow people who place a premium on that to consider it.

But yeah, it could also serve to give visibility into the breakdown of countries of origin, for those who just want to avoid sending money to countries they view as abusive.

I doubt you can fully eliminate China-sourced products but looking at "TAA compliant" products is a start. TAA compliance is a US federal standard that guarantees a minimum level of manufacturing involvement in TAA countries [1], which is a list that does not include China.

I'm not going to pretend I'm able to avoid China in all my purchasing decisions but I now do some research to avoid China-made or at least China-designed products.

[1] https://gsa.federalschedules.com/resources/taa-designated-co...

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