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I bought a couple of pairs of blue jeans this week, my favorite brand, Levi’s.  Comfort and quality, and jeans that seem to fit my middle-aged figure a bit better.

I do not buy clothing often.  I am a jeans, t-shirt, sweatshirt, type of gal.  When I buy something new I find myself looking carefully at the tags, sometimes looking at where they were made after I arrive home with my purchases. 

My two new pairs of jeans were made in Sri Lanka and Turkmeniston.  Curiosity stepped in.  I looked at some of my older Levi tags.  Made in Columbia, Brazil, Mexico and Cambodia.  I stopped looking at that point.

Nothing said made in America. 

Why is that?

We speculate that American workers are all about money. 

I recently joined in on a discussion about motivating employees.  The talk went all over the place, left to right, top to bottom.  I said motivation comes from a person’s own personal passion.  Some said motivation comes from money, and nothing less these days.  Personally, money would not motivate me.  If I disliked what I was doing, no amount of money would make me feel any different. 

Would you purchase jeans that were made in America, pay more for them, to ensure the worker received their $29.99 per hour, verses the seamstress in Sri Lanka that is likely receiving $3.00 an hour, and I pray that they are not a child!

Many of us think Levi’s originated in the United States.  They did, by a Loeb Strauss, who was german born.  He developed the company “Levi Strauss & Co”.  Mr. Strauss immigrated to the United States in 1829.  Some say the original jeans fabric came from France. 

I found an interesting website AmericansWorking.com as I began thinking about American made clothing and products.  The website lists many types of products that are made on American soil.  I found a company that makes clothing and jeans, All American Clothing Company.  Their jeans look rather attractive, surprisingly they only run about $10.00 more per pair than Levi’s. 

Do I have a problem with clothing made anywhere but the United States? No.  But I am concerned about the trade balance.  I read up on that topic a few days ago.  We import a lot more than we export in this country!

I look at how many people are out of work in our country.  I look at the unemployment rate in our county alone.  I look at what we can do to keep people in work, right here, in our country.  And I wonder…how do we resolve this? How do we get ourselves back to being proud, proud to say, this is American made?