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Buy American.
It really does matter.
When a small town loses its only manufacturing plant or one of the few it has, the experience can cause a devastating ripple effect. When a large metropolitan area loses a manufacturing plant, the effect on the community can be more subtle, less visible.
Apparel and textile plants have been the mainstays of hundreds of small towns in this country. Even in a state such as Missouri where the major metropolitan areas of St Louis and Kansas City house much of the state's business activities, two-thirds of apparel production is located in towns with populations of 6,000 or less.
Communities also suffer other losses from factory closings, including lost state and local taxes, lost purchases of utilities, and lost retail sales. How high are those losses? In Georgia alone, the textile industry paid an estimated $160 million in state and local taxes and more than $160 million in purchases of electricity in a single year. The inevitable consequences of the loss of such an industry in one state alone are obvious.
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