It's a foreign concept to buy domestically

Lorraine Sommerfeld

As I tucked my van into one of the few parking spots available in the vast lot, my headlights caught the bumper sticker stuck to the Chevy Suburban in the spot ahead of me. "Out of a Job Yet?" it asked rhetorically. "Keep Buying Foreign."

I hate bumper stickers in general, but I hate this one with special intensity. Not so much its message, though the fact that most cars are made from foreign parts and assembled elsewhere makes the whole "foreign/domestic" distinction debatable.

No, I hate it because the guy who strolled up to that truck had a Wal-Mart bag slung over his shoulder.

I had an urge to jump out and haul the back of his shirt over to expose the "Made In China" tag I'd undoubtedly find. I wanted to dump out the bag of toys he'd purchased to see how few sported "Made In Canada" stickers.

Years ago, I produced a line of specialty clothing. Initially, I did all the cutting and sewing myself. As it grew, I worked with a couple of shops in Brantford, which were excellent. I was proud of the "Made In Canada" tags that went into each garment.

Within months, competition with the Pacific Rim entered the equation and these shops couldn't compete. Small start-ups like mine couldn't keep them in business, and they watched all their local business head overseas as consumers developed a crack-like addiction to T-shirts made by workers earning pennies an hour.

We've all been complicit in the results. Why have one pair of jeans when you can have 10? Why keep an old cellphone when the spanky new version can be had rightthisverysecond? Why say no to your kids when it's so cheap and easy to say yes?

It's becoming increasingly hard in this globalized economy to actually know where each part of a car or truck comes from.

That Suburban sporting the bumper sticker? Made in Mexico, near where Ford makes transmissions for its Mustangs. The Chevy Equinox engine? Courtesy of China. That Ford Fusion? Again, from Mexico.

Down the road one way, your Honda Civic comes out of Alliston, and the same distance the other way, they're spitting out Toyotas and Suzukis.

Many vehicles are a dog's breakfast of sources – fewer than half of all parts on Ford, GM and Chrysler products are now produced in North America, according to a recent report. Buying a car is already a maze of information, misinformation, facts, figures and financing. Are we prepared to evaluate how "local" all of our purchases are?

Maybe the guy with the bumper sticker should check his pantry. Will he notice how many fruit cups contain fruit not from the Niagara region – rated among the best in the world – but from China.

Maybe he should remind himself that Niagara's fruit industry – so close to the gutted Windsor and Detroit – has literally pulled its trees out by the roots with the recent closure of a century-old cannery. A hundred years' production gone due to a confluence of economic and consumer crises. Ring a bell?

I want all of my neighbours employed – not just those related to the auto industry. But when it comes to a global economy, you're either in or out. You can't in good conscience cherry-pick when to participate.

Just ask the fruit growers.

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Saturday in Wheels and Mondays in Living. lorraineonline.ca

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