Uniforms for U.S. Olympic athletes are American red, white and blue — but made in China. That has members of Congress fuming.
Republicans and Democrats railed Thursday about the U.S. Olympic Committee’s decision to dress the U.S. team in Chinese manufactured berets, blazers and pants while the American textile industry struggles economically with many U.S. workers desperate for jobs.
Classy, huh? This never crossed their minds? I’m glad to see this is a bi-partisan issue. Overall I don’t get too bent out of shape from where things are made. I prefer American-made things (the shirt I’m wearing right now has a “Made in the USA” tag), but I also understand that people want and need cheap clothes, and places with no labor laws like China are the places for that.
But we’re talking about the US OLYMPIC TEAM! We’re going to be competing against places like China in Chinese-made uniforms. This is as tone-deaf as Chinese-made American Flags.
I think that there should be a law that any manufactured goods that the government buys have to be made here in the USA. They are our tax dollars, and they should not go to other countries.
Interesting idea, and I’d support it so long as it doesn’t prop-up American monopolies. I’d hate to see an American company falling into economic complacency because all thier competition is overseas.
But overall its a good idea.
I was talking with a buddy about the FN SCAR rifle, and he went on a bit of a rant about non-American military hardware, and how pissed he was when .gov dumped the M1911A1 for the Beretta M9.
He had a very valid point.
Did you see the prices charged for those uniforms? $700+ for each blazer alone. And they made them in China…..I understand the occasional need to buy cheap, resulting in buying Chinese made, I do it myself quite a bit to keep on a budget, but for that price they could have made it in the USA.
They could have made them by HAND at that price!
The price list : http://abcnews.go.com/news/t/blogEntry?id=16759235 (hope that link works, it was giving me fits).
So basically Ralph Loren made a bundle off the uniforms.
So kind of him to not only charge so much, but also to make his logo so prominent!
That’s just disgusting!
Am I the only one who caught a face-full of creepy ‘propaganda poster’ vibe? No one else seems to have mentioned it.
The whole Olympics thing has descended so far into irrelevancy for me that I see something like this and I can’t even dredge up a “Meh.”
Oh yeah, when they’re on NOBODY will watch them. Olympic TV viewership is MSNBC levels!
Well if they’d actually show the various competitions instead of spending over half their time on analysts and stories…..