"Buy foreign:" This slogan would knot allegiance, that is affective ties to a larger social body, in all sorts of interesting ways. First, one would buy foreign cars in order to support local workers. I remember a string of Toyota ads form a few years ago that tried to localize their brand. The ad showed their top selling car, which was then second to the Ford Taurus, and the voice over announced that it was made in their new Cleveland (?) plant. Film of workers wearing UAW hardhats and badges on their shirtsleeves, smiling into the camera, were the penultimate scenes; video of the car, obviously, closed the ad.
The strategy was to breakdown a long standing prejudice of buying "imports" by demonstrating that they were not in fact imported at all. No, they are produced by fellow Americans like you and me: union boys, blue collar folks. Despite my cynicism for clothing capital in nationalism, one does have to acknowledge that those plants employ a huge number of people and help grow that space's economy. While part of the profit goes to the larger transnational corporation, part also gets reinvested into that plant, that community and into workers' incomes. One also 'supports' the unions and their hard won 'victories'––nothing can be said without scare quotes––which is also an implicit support for decent working conditions, livable wages and such. (As a contrast, I am thinking of the lack of such labor organizations––their violent suppression actually––in developing nations)
Support America and American Unions: Buy Foreign.
Weird.
I am sympathetic to some obvious objections: 1) Belonging to a Union dampens but does not end the exploitation of the working class. 2) So, what we are talking about here is a liberal-reformist argument rather than what is really necessary, an overturning of the entire capitalist system and its perpetual class antagonisms. 3) This thinking and the action it advocates––buy foreign––naturalizes (?) capitalism as the system within which one has to work, a system in which one's agency is limited to rearranging deck chairs rather than getting off the damn boat.
Yes.
I am at the limit of my ethical thought here. While I want to advocate for a revolutionary overturning of the world capitalist system, I also don't want the desire for such ethical cleanliness to handcuff thinking through the immediate and horrifyingly uneven distribution of wealth. Neither is as diametrically opposed to each other as I have just laid out and perhaps this is the space for a "double gesture," another idea I would like to think through.
Also, I find the question you raise about 'quality' to be both really interesting and something I can't quite comment on. Here are, however, some quotes form Wikipedia. The first regards ISO 9000 and the second "fair trade" advocacy.
"Certification to an ISO 9000 standard does not guarantee the compliance (and therefore the quality) of end products and services; rather, it certifies that consistent business processes are being applied. Although the standards originated in manufacturing, they are now employed across a wide range of other types of organizations, including colleges and universities. A "product", in ISO vocabulary, can mean a physical object, or services, or software."
"As have most developmental efforts, fair trade has proved itself controversial and has drawn criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. Some economists and conservative think tanks see fair trade as a type of subsidy that impedes growth. Segments of the left criticize fair trade for not adequately challenging the current trading system."
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