Shoes that look better with age...

[ATWM]

3 hours ago, Broark said:

but this seems to firmly substantiate them.

I disagree. Perhaps it’s the old journalist in me, but some skepticism is always warranted when an incomplete online story catches fire.

A letter from the FTC is obviously concerning, but there is some grey area in the law that’s defined, and it’s quite possible that they’ve been doing the same thing for quite awhile and it was okay under a previous administration, and now it isn’t. These laws written vaguely as such leave a lot of discretion for enforcement.

This isn’t to say they don’t need to comply, and that they should absolutely be transparent about their sourcing - I’m just saying that suspicion ≠ is not confirmation, and I feel like - at least given from what I know in the letter - they should at be given the benefit of the doubt for the period that that the FTC gives them to comply (whatever that actually means in practice). 

Anyways, it sucks either way, but there’s too much unknown in there at this point. What if, for example, the leather is American, the sole is American, the sole stitching is American, but the stitching on the upper is Dominican. It’s mostly USA, right? I wouldn’t label it MiUSA myself, but the way the law is written arguably leaves room for that, or did. And I do completely agree that it’s not hard to be transparent, and they should if they are not.

That said, this can all get pretty complicated because almost everything now is somehow a global product. Even jeans have cotton from one country and thread from potentially somewhere else and hardware from who knows with metal from who knows. I digress - I’m not defending OSB. I just want to see a little more information first. 

[indigoeagle]

I think, there a lots of videos, articles and discussions on luxury goods, that state that they were "made in Italy" or "Swiss made".

Apparently sometimes whole suits were made abroad except for the buttons, which were then finished in Italy and that was still enough to call them "made in Italy".
But what if the act of attaching the buttons in Italy is more expensive than sewing the suit somewhere else, so that part would be more than 50% of the cost of manufacturing?

Edited 13 hours ago by indigoeagle

[chicote]

I feel these days more often than not the whole “made in X country” thing is either a xenophobic dog whistle made in bad faith, or a “good faith” desire to reshore industrial manufacturing in societies that have now developed post-industrial economies and are probably .. I mean definitely .. never going back.

the problem with the latter argument is that offshoring is a natural result of globalized neoliberalism and the free trade agreements that come with it. It’s just a reality that practically all manufacturing these days requires materials & labor from many countries often on opposite sides of the globe. I’m sure you all have seen those videos on how a single t-shirt takes materials from like a half dozen countries and travels twice around the world before it’s stocked in some mall in Nebraska for $8.99 - or if not that maybe the video from when the U.S.’ steel tariffs were first announced showing the impact that would have on the price of “U.S. Made” Ford pickup trucks (they went up many many thousands of dollars… because most of the truck’s parts come from overseas). And all the executives at Ford were wringing their hands saying it would take decades to shift their manufacturing back to the U.S., but still somehow making the claim their vehicles are made here.

That is to say, I’m not sure why any one shoemaker that claims their stuff is made in the U.S. is getting flak more than any other one for that not actually being the case. I love my Mexican huaraches, Colombian congas and Iranian rug because they’re made by amazing and talented craftspeople, not because they have some magical quality derived from their country of origin. I wish we could evolve this whole conversation to have an appreciation for the many many hands and cultures that come together to make everything in the modern world. It’s really amazing when you think about it! Instead we pretend that 3/4 of the global supply chain doesn’t exist and that we’re too good for goods made, even in part, in less developed countries… and we do so surrounded by things made in those very countries!!

Edited 5 hours ago by chicote