judd's blog

Back in 2004, a then-fledgling New York-based adjustable bed manufacturer assumed he would be forced to produce key components overseas. But nearly a decade later, he’s making some of his company’s beds in the good ole USA. His company is one of many small businesses rethinking their off-shoring philosophy.

Unionization is up at Foxconn plants in China but workers are still toiling away more hours a day than allowed by the Chinese government. That's when you know you're exploited when the least free nation tells you so.

The Obama Administration's obsession with expanding free trade and allowing the rest of the world to benefit from our nation's energy boom is likely to land us all in the poorhouse. The White House's economic vision as it is coming into focus puts us on a slippery slope to third-world nation status. But you can help us stop the impending disaster before it's too late.

Who says you have to exploit underpaid foreign workers toiling away in potential deathtraps in places more interested in turning a buck than protecting its people to get the latest in summer fashion? At a Silicon Valley-based swimwear maker, the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny polka-dot bikini isn't the victim of U.S. garment industry outsourcing.

Popstress Demi Lovato certainly wants to hit a chord with Americans just a few months before the July 4th holiday. Her latest single "Made in the USA," a plea to get an ex-lover back that is punctuated with various American references is a good start to reach younger generations on why we need to depend more on ourselves than foreign imports.

Fewer overseas crude oil imports helped narrow the nation's trade deficit in March to its lowest level in 17 years. The gap between the United States and China continued to shrink but is still higher than with any other nation.

Back in the mid-1990s, electronics technician Roger Simmermaker had a difficult time finding Made in America products, including clothing, so he created a guide entitled "How Americans Can Buy American" to find them. Nowadays, it's not nearly as difficult. What a difference a few decades and greater demand will make.

The Wall Streeters -- so-called Masters of the Universe -- are exactly the last Americans we should be seeking economic advice from. But that doesn't stop The New York Times from soliciting the viewpoint of one disgraced Wall Streeter and "car czar" on what ails our nation's financial situation and keeps the majority of our nation's citizens down.

A recent spate of suicides at its Zhengzhou factory has got the People's Republic of Foxconn, supplier to Apple and other high-tech manufacturers, to thinking about relaxing its strict workers' rules. But the company doesn't want lower management and the workers, themselves, to know. Sounds like a publicity stunt. Cesar Chavez is rolling over in his grave.

Forget about eroding U.S. infrastructure, educational decline, and weak economic activity. Whether most Americans think so or not, the United States continues to reign supreme as the world's largest economy, in the face of soaring growth in India and China. The question is do we really want a second American Century? American Jobs Board member Clyde Prestowitz says let Asia take that overrated honor.