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Forget the conspiracy theories about where President Barack Obama was born: There's evidence just blocks from the White House that the American president was "made in China." And Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has the pictures to prove it.
A bust of Barack Obama was "crafted in China"
During a recent stroll through the National Museum of American History, Sanders discovered that a number of products sold in the gift shop were not made America, but produced in other countries.
"I find it especially disappointing that miniature sculptures of presidents of the United States that are sold in the museum, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Barack Obama were made in China," Sanders wrote in a letter to the museum director.
http://sanders.senate.gov/statues.html
Miniature sculptures on sale at the National Museum of American History
Sanders, an independent Senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, acknowledged that buying foreign products will not have a "profound" impact on the trade deficit, but added "the symbolism is extraordinary" and "pretty pathetic."
"It appears that a museum owned by the people of the United States, celebrating the history of the United States, cannot find companies in this country employing American workers that are able to manufacture statues of our founding fathers, or our current president."
Sanders' letter was sent yesterday to the museum's director, Brent Glass. The Smithsonian Institution, which overseas the operation of the museum, has yet to respond to Sanders' letter or NBC News for comment.
The senator told the director that one of the major reasons that the unemployment rate in this country is so high "is because it is increasingly difficult to find products in our nation's stores that are manufactured in this country."
"Our national museum should do it's best to be a model in helping us address that crisis situation," Sanders said.
*** UPDATE *** The director of the museum called NBC News to respond to Sanders' letter.
Brent Glass says that "most of the items we offer [in the gift shop] are made in America." He said the directive to vendors who buy merchandise for the store "is to buy American whenever they can."
Glass said he wasn't aware of the circumstances for the miniature presidential statues, but promised he would look into it and report back to Sen. Sanders.
"There are many options in the gift shop if [visitors] want to buy American," Glass said.
He added that he was "aware and sensitive" to the symbolic significance of having presidential items made in China, but continued "the vast majority are made in the United States."
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You don't see "Made in the USA" much anymore. I buy USA products when I can, but they are getting harder and harder to find!
This is why one day, our Kids will wake with a Chinese Communist as their President! China is playing the West and nobody seems to care as long as they get cheap stuff!
And you do realize that "Made in the U.S.A." meant that it was likely manufactured in SAIPAN, the Northern Marianas Commonwealth Islands. The same place the RE-peat-the-lie-to-the-PUBLIC-ans want your health Insurance company to be headquartered. That is why they keep calling for the right to sell insurance across "STATE" lines. SAIPAN is their scam, loophole exemption, lie.
Keep watching the Hu visit. China wants to keep a nuclear US amicable, so their signing billions worth of renewable energy trade deals to help the US pay off its debt, create jobs in the renewable industry in America, and solve the oil price situation.
It's a global economy. Get over it.
With what? An unemployment check?
A global economy, made possible by the U.S. military and the U.S. taxpayers' credit rating.
It may be cheaper to be made in China, but who will buy it when no one has a JOB. I forgot about Chinese tourist.
Taking a protectionist stance and discouraging foreign made goods on our soil will not result in more jobs for Americans.
I take a liberal stance on many issues but I do not believe in protectionism. The impact of Chinese goods on the vast majority of Americans is positive. Foreign imports keep prices down and encourage domestic competition which in effect raises real income for most of us. Some workers are displaced but most of us benefit.
"Some?" Some. Some! Some.
Ten percent unemployment is 'some?'
Charles you are correct but I think his point was at least in the museum about America selling American memorabilia should try to have American made products.
ED, before the unemployment rate dropped we were still consuming massive amounts of Chinese goods. There is no correlation, and even if there was it would not prove causation. (Post hoc ergo propter hoc). We could point to all the specific jobs that are gone, textile manufaturing jobs for example, but we also have to consider that we have more money left over to spend after we buy all the goods we need from China-mart. That extra money we spend on services translates to more jobs. It might be that we are not benefiting overall from the balance but it is not like one job in China equals one less job in the US.
Sweetness, I can understand that the symbolism of a George Washington figurine made in China would be especially disheartening if you think that Chinese goods = lost American jobs. I don't beleive that so I am not bothered at all by the symbolism.
Hey- maybe the Chinese can pay Louisiana people less than minimum wage to grow their rice!
Global economies are like that, yes they are.
Reminder to self: blow up Lei Yixin's imperialist sculpt of MLK.
This is not surprising considering the article clearly states that The Smithsonian "...overseas the operation...".
Talk about your Freudian typos~
Will we have to go to China to visit the Smithsonian in the future?
Its amazing the idiotic things people say to score political points, who cares where this stuff is made? It doesn't matter!
It matters to the American companies and workers who do manufacture similar things and could make these sculptures.
Thank you, Senator Sanders for making some noise. For those of us who try to "buy American", it is a challenge and sometimes you just can't find American.
The idea that computer components and things like sculptures can be made cheaper in China sounds good but think of the impact it has on US jobs and on the enviroment--it takes a lot of fuel to move it from there to here. Why can't we manufacture here and there--here for this side of the globe's consumers and over there for that side. Too simplistic I'm sure and I do understand competitive prices. For years, local farmers grew tomatoes for an HJ Heinz plant which made ketchup and chili sauce. Now those tomatoes are grown in South America; US farmers were impacted by that decision not just the Heinz workers. Wasn't too long ago when the Girl Scouts of America were thinking of having their uniforms made in China until it was reported on the news and people were outraged. Remember the hoopla over US flags and military uniform berets being made overseas.
We've become an armed camp and a tourist destination. We lead in aerospace, medicine, and pharmacological products. We, the U.S. citizen and taxpayer, have subsidized our own undoing. We allow our own military to "protect" the global business interests of "people" who scour the world for the cheapest slave labor.
The Chinese own us. The great USA has a landlord. Those poor backward communists lend us 4 billion a day so we can keep the lights on. Attention Wal Mart shoppers repeat after me "I am living better with cheaper prices".
funny in a sad sort of way.
I think it is called CAPITALISM. Let the market determine the prices. Let the people decide the prices they will pay for the things they want. Makes no difference where they are made...unless we want to manipulate capitalism to our own advantage...well, I guess that sounds pretty American to me!
I believe in the "Free Market System"...yes...I believe that in a true "Free Market System" all the jobs will disappear forever to China, India, Vietnam...you get the idea.
SHAME on you Rachel Maddow! Speaking Pres. Hu's visit during Bush, you falsely claimed that an announcer said "Taiwan" instead of "China."
That's one of those technically correct statements intended to mislead people. The announcer said "Republic of China" instead of "People's Republic of China." Not Taiwan instead of China.
This kind of nonsense is beneath you. It's something I expect from Fox, not from you. It really disappoints me.
You can bet that the English to Chinese translator made mention of the confused conflation in Hu's ear. Yes, Rachel was technically wrong to "misquote" the announcement. I would bet that she will make a "correction" of her error tonight. Still makes the Bush administration look like the incompetents they chose to be.
This is NOT acceptable...Bravo Bernie.
The Truth is, not many employers in the US do not want to set up anything that will not make huge profits..but wait a minute THERE ARE folks who would make these statues...we will just not ask them...
Many Indian Nations in the US and Canada are looking for opportunities to establish small scale factories to offer employment to their people on the reserves themselves...PLEASE let us give these folks a chance to work here, in their home...the one we stole from them...and contribute to keeping America for Americans...
want contacts?
PS I am a US summer resident. In the winter, I live here is frosty Quebec, Mohawks are my neighbors...and here, what we worry about most is that our FARMLAND is being bought up rapidly, VERY RAPIDLY, by Chinese interests...Small farms must sell or die off. What is wrong with us...Are our big and excessively wealthy corporations so underpaying their workers that these workers can no longer afford to live here and buy local????
I hate to tell this guy the reason why they are made in China is because they can be made cheap. If this was made in America this product would cost 5 times more than it sells for in the shop. Meaning no one is going to buy it at that price. Because of all the regulation government puts on business and lot's of other things they put on business just to produce a product. So now I take back my comment about this selling for 5 times, I bet it would sell for 10 times. Remember America the main reason products are made outside of our borders is our own fault. We did this to ourself. So we deserve what we get. Cheap products made cheap instead of cheap products made expensively. Which in turn one would buy.
Bad regulations, like what kinda materials go into a product shame on us for not wanting poisons and lead in our products bad bad government
Reality Lesson 101:
The US manufacture sector was sold out in 1965; although global trade has existed for hundreds if not thousands of years, what the Captains of US corporations had been working on since the 1930s was to create a US version of the Dutch East Indies colonial operation. The Rockefeller's, Ford Foundation, Bechtel, and others believed the Dutch had made easy money for three hundred years by selling the produce of Java & Sumarta to Europe on the cheap; so the ambition was to replace the Dutch with American corporations.
That's why the US news and history books wrote the Axis leader Sukarno out of the US version of history, that's why the US issued order that Sukarno and his militia were NOT to be arrested or disarmed at the end of the Pacific War, that's why the Ford Foundation in '45/'46 began flying the elite of Java to US universities for re-education, that's why the Ford Foundation in '49 ramped up it's presentations telling US businesses that backing Sukarno would give the US easy access to the wealth of South East Asia (and the world's largest gold mine in Papua which the US would re-define as part of Asia so it could be claimed as a Indoesian colony for the Freeport mine also built by Bechtel; etc. etc.)
That's also why these corporations had to cripple the CIA, to prevent it reporting the corporation's overeseas afairs to the DoJ, DoS, and DoD; the Pearl Harbor disaster proved the need for an Information agency to ensure the government experts knew such information, but the Rockefellers & Ford etc. needed to stop the US government plans for discovering such information. The solution was to expand the role of the CIA to include it's own Foreign Affairs policies (outlined by the Ford Foundation duriing the 1950s), so that the CIA would now have to classify all of it's information as too secret for the US government to know. The CIA was in effect hi-jacked by the 1949 CIA Act.
During the 1950s the Ford Foundation and associates discovered Sukarno was just as corrupt as they were, and Sukarno wanted the lion's share of the profits of harvesting "Indonesia"; then they discovered the Indonesian generals like General Suharto were also just as corrupt but wanted quick profits, they would happily sell out the female population of Java as sweatshop workers & kill people from Sumarta to Borneo to the Celebes to Papua so that Exxon & NewMont & Freeport could have their mines built by Bechtel.
That's why Eisenhower warned the US of the "industrial military complex" - not even the US President dared to name Robert Lovett and company as the puppett masters pulling the strings; and Lovett already had manipulationed Kennedy into appointing Bundy as the US National Security Adviser.
THAT's why the US sold them there black people of Papua to Indonesian rule, to prevent world recognition of the Papuan elections in Jan/1961 and the New Guinea Council that took office in April/1961; that 's why the US refused to acknowledge the Council and instead blackmailed the Netherlands into signing the New York Agreement trading a million Papuan people to foreign Islamic military rule of Indonesia.
But Bundy did too good a sell job on Kennedy, who had been told that Sukarno was vital to US interests, so Kennedy did the logical thing of designing a fiscal package to help stabalise Sukarno's government in Indonesia. . . Kennedy did not know about the Gold mine or that the CIA since '57 had been planning on replacing Sukarno with General Suharto. But a magic bullet fixed that Presential difficultly for the Freeport mine & US access to the "wealth of Asia"
So in 1965 General Suharto took over, and the US clothing industry got CHEAP labour.
That's the start of "globalization" as you know it today.