Any radiator caps made in USA?

[MikeInNH]

@oldtimer-11

Nowhere near as bad as turning North on 81! Besides

That’s where I grew up and still have family there.

[ArlHtsMelissa]

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. "

[VOLVO-V70]

Melissa , are you not well ? I ask because you really do post some strange things .

[Whitey]

@VOLVO_V70

I ask because you really do post some strange things

Normally, I wouldn’t consider a passage from the US Constitution strange, but posted without context or comment, it certainly is.

[cdaquila]

Hi Melissa. How does oldtimer’s comment about the changes in manufacturing make you think of the Constitution?

[ArlHtsMelissa]

The future was mentioned and posterity has been on my mind as well as the U.S. Constitution and I don’t have a large social circle.

[shanonia]

That’s the preamble to the Constitution. That’s a word I capitalize when it refers to the Constitution of the USA. When I was an 8th grade social studies teacher, I taught that statement and we discussed what it meant, then and now. Students were supported to remember it and recite it. It was one of the highlights of their 8th grade year.

We also had fun with it. Do a Google search for Barney Fife reciting the Preamble.

[TwinTurbo]

@bloody_knuckles

Close but no cigar. There are vast differences between Country of Origin rules for marking imported goods and the Federal Trade Commission’s rules for labeling goods “Made in USA”. In order for goods to be labeled “Made in USA” they must contain “all or substantially all US content”. As an expert witness in court cases, I can tell you that companies that violate this FTC rule get the pants sued off of them.

I tried to be brief. Why? Because I have spent time in the past composing verbose posts that fell on deaf ears (or eyes as the case may be). I mentioned this aspect-

@TwinTurbo

First, there’s a difference between origin and manufacture .

because it is significant when it comes to markings.

You’re absolutely right that there are very strict rules on the marking of “Made in the USA”. It’s far too involved to provide all that detail here and frankly, would not be meaningful to most of the audience on this board.

@bloody_knuckles

Goods that are imported are subject to marking rules in the Customs Regulations. They must be marked with the country of origin in where they were last “substantially transformed”. There are some commodity specific rules and certain processes are excluded from “substantial transformation”, such as cleaning, painting, lubricating, and mere dilution by water.

And this is EXACTLY my point. People are led to believe by the marking that is it wholly manufactured in the country denoted in the marking. But it’s not necessarily so. In the end, it doesn’t really matter to me as a consumer if the last materially relevant work was 51% in China, Vietnam or the USA for that matter…

@bloody_knuckles

Folks, there are plenty of strong rules out there regarding marking and origin. This is your government at its best trying to make sure that the consumer knows the actual origin of the goods.

Of course there are protectionist rules in place. The government is not proactively ensuring they are met. Typically, some industry/company has to file a complaint about a competitor violating the rules for any action to ensue. It was a bit humorous for me to see in essence- we’re from the government and we’re here to help

@bloody_knuckles

Keep in mind that we live in a global world, whether you like it or not, and supply chains for most companies are global. This means few products with complex bills of material are truly “made in USA”. In a global world we should be more focused on companies that bring good manufacturing jobs to the US. Car makers around the world have built plants here in the US (BMW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and more) and support many excellent jobs for Americans.

This is sage advice and I agree wholeheartedly. Essentially what I was also trying to convey to the OP especially regarding something as simple as a radiator cap…

[Docnick]

It gets murky, to say the least. Costco in Canada sells their house brand coffee beans under the name Java Club. Until recently it read “Product of Canada”: on the bag. The coffee beans were roasted in the Vancouver area, and packaged there.

Consumer backlash and government attention changed all that since Vancouver does not have coffee plantations and the claim was ludicrous!.

So now it reads that the coffee is processed (roasted) in Canada from imported beans, something like that.

My widescreen Panasonic TV is “Hecho en Mexico” (made in Mexico), but from imported parts. This means it’s assembled in one of the border city maquiladores assembly plants and promptly shipped to the US and Canada after that
Not a single Mexican plant could begin to make the critical components in this set.

[RandomTroll]

Companies Falsely Labeled Products ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Their Financial Penalty? $0.