Made in China. Yeah, but …

“But what do we mean when we say something is ‘Made in China.’ Perhaps not what we think we are saying.

“Shenoy emphasizes that Chinese workers do the final assembly of many products, but final assembly is but the tip of the iceberg of production. When you look at the full manufacturing process, you find a system of worldwide cooperation. Most of the materials and machines the Chinese use in assembly were made somewhere else: sewing machines in Japan, Korea, and the United States; dyes in Germany; button-making machinery in the United States, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; zippers in Japan; spinning and weaving machinery in the United Kingdom; raw cotton in Uzbekistan, Egypt, and the United States (subsidized by the government); cotton gins in the United States; and steel in Japan and Korea.

“Once assembled, the goods have to be moved to the docks for transport to the United States. The trucks that do the moving are made in Japan. The ships and containers are made in Korea, Japan, America, and Britain. The shipping services are Greek and Norwegian.”

http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/22/the-case-against-made-in-the-usa/singlepage

(The question is not where all of a product is made, but the number of American workers out of work because the product is not made here. That complaint is answered in part by: “You say, how are we going to compete with all these other countries? The answer is, of course, you compete by producing goods that were not produced before.”

Link from maggiesfarm.