Soon, Old Glory will have to be born in the land of the free and not merely flying over it.
Congress has passed a proposal to require the federal government to purchase only American flags that have been completely manufactured in the U.S. The U.S. imports millions of American flags from overseas, mostly from China, and the sponsors of the proposal said it’s time for American flags to originate in the country they represent.
Supporters of the proposal, led by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, said the change is more than just symbolic — they believe it will support American jobs and manufacturers while preserving the nation’s most recognized banner.
On its surface that’s not a horrible position for a government to take.
It’s not unreasonable for the national government (in any country) to give some level of local preference to all procurement, not only something symbolic like flags. That would actually incentivize companies to onshore more of their manufacturing - or at least slow down their offshoring.
Yeah honestly national symbol items being made locally just makes sense for so many reasons if possible and this is definitely possible. Especially since it should be the purpose of the national government to support internal functions and business before external whenever possible right?
With of course like allowments for maybe raw materials or specialized things if it’s not possible. I would get this feeling silly for a country like Vanuatu but the US has resources aplenty.
Plus in times of broken down supply lines it provides at least one manufacturing plant to rely on. This is also true of the military already for those reasons.