Daily Archives: July 12, 2006

How do you define American?

I found the recent article What is an American car, anyway? on CNNMoney.com quite thought provoking as it noted that the Chrysler PT Cruiser is built in Mexico by a company based in Germany, despite the fact that Chrysler is seen as part of the traditional American big three. Moreover, when a Toyota is just as likely to be made locally as a Ford, just what does “American car” mean. And to make matters even more confusing, it looks like an alliance between Renault, Nissan, and GM (the tenth, seventh, and largest car manufacturers) is in the works.

For that matter, just what is an American product? Think about all the products you use in the run of a day. You get up in the morning and use your coffee maker, an appliance likely to be made by General Electric – in China. You go to work and use a computer, which is likely made of components sourced from China, Taiwan, and Japan, even if it is an IBM or a Dell. I could go on, but you get the point.

I’m also guessing that a significant amount of the food an American eats in a day isn’t even American grown, due to the large amount of imports from Canada, Mexico, South America, and other parts of the world.

Now, I don’t have the answer. But I’m curious as to what my readers and fellow-bloggers think, even my fellow Canadian ones, who can instead answer “what is a Canadian product”?