Made in the USA

We picked up this gem of a jointer for free today. One of the many perks of Faith’s MakeHaven membership is that people often post stuff like this for free or stupidly cheap. Alex from North Haven was clearing out his family’s suburban garage and saw no reason to keep it. He was at the golf course when we arrived. We left him an assortment of beers left over from our summer party, loaded the jointer onto the truck we borrowed from a friend, and brought it home. Later, he sent a selfie of himself drinking one of the beers. Sorry to have missed you, he said. Send a pic of something you make with it. Will do.

I’ve written here about jointers and makerspaces before. Ours is a DIY 7-inch jointer; MakeHaven’s is an industrial 16-incher. Whatever.

I won’t bore you too much with this Craftsman jointer, other than to say it has a solid cast-iron table and a steel base. We can testify to its sturdiness, having just moved it from one place to another. Right now, I’m more interested in the geopolitics and corporate drama of power tools like this one.

Craftsman started as a Sears line in 1927 with an admirable selling point: an unlimited lifetime warranty. Sears never made Craftsman products. They contracted the work to other US manufacturers. And their stuff was good, but they were smart, marketing-wise, about what “good” meant. From the beginning, the Craftsman line introduced a three-tiered product line: good, better, and best. Harbor Freight later adopted the same system. Craftsman’s better or middle-tier line was manufactured by companies like DeWalt, which is the top-tier stuff you’ll find at big-box home stores today. Its truly top-tier line was produced by professional toolmakers like Jet and Laguna, which cost thousands of dollars.

‍In the 1980s, Sears sold Craftsman to Stanley Black and Decker, an amalgam of a solid, trusted tool brand (Stanley) and an inexpensive, subpar brand mainly sold at Kmart. Even so, Stanley Black and Decker agreed to uphold the original 1927 unlimited lifetime warranty Sears and Craftsman had promised. That holds true to this day.

Our new Craftsman jointer is circa 1980s. It’s not nearly as big as its industrial counterparts, but it’s solid and will do the job. As Craftsman tools go, it falls under the label of Best.

And it was made in the USA. That’s the really interesting part, to me. Because I’m not a purist, or if I am, I’m a troubled one. Let me explain. As I too often do, I’ve researched the heck out of this, and I’ve thought way too much about it. I’m still not sure where I stand on the issue.

Craftsman tools occupy this weird in-between space. They’re American-made, or were, with those amazing unlimited lifetime warranties, but from the start, they trailblazed an era in which a company like Sears contracted manufacturing out to other companies and simply slapped the Craftsman label onto products made by a variety of toolmakers. By the 1980s, when companies like DeWalt were brought into the loop, it meant that some Craftsman tools, like all DeWalt tools, were manufactured in China. Not the “Best” ones, like our jointer, but the ones that ended up in Home Depot and Lowe’s. DeWalt isn’t the only US company that does it. Jet, Grizzly, Laguna, Powertec, SawStop, and a host of other American companies now have their tools manufactured in China and throughout Southeast Asia. They may be engineered and designed here, but they’re built elsewhere.

They all cost more than their Chinese-owned counterparts with names like Banggood (one that I was a little worried about Googling), ENJOYWOOD (also potentially sketchy), Hongdui, Wnew, and Ganwei. But confusingly, here are the names of some other Chinese tool companies: Harvey Industries, Bridge City Tool Works, and Maxpower Tools.

If the question is about quality alone, there’s no reason to dismiss all Chinese-made tools. Couple that with the price difference and the fact that most American-owned tool companies produce their stuff in China anyway, and it becomes hard to think of a good reason for scrupulously avoiding Chinese counterparts. Unless, that is, you either disdain China and/or feel a moral compulsion to support the very small handful of remaining U.S. tool manufacturers by spending a whole lot more on the things you buy. I’ve been pondering another way of looking at it: Why shouldn’t I want to support workers everywhere and hold corporations and politicians responsible for the decline in U.S. manufacturing instead of consumer choices and China?

My thoughts on China, as with most things, are always evolving, but here’s where they sort of stand right now. To be fair, what they’ve done since the 1970s, by integrating capitalism but with the state at the wheel, is, from a human well-being standpoint, pretty astonishing. Given the size of their population, they managed to single-handedly reduce global poverty by something like 20 percent. The Chinese middle class soared because of decisions they made at the government level, whereas the U.S. middle class has been shrinking because of decisions made by our government. They’re leading the way in the green revolution; we’re withdrawing from it, doubling down on dirty energy and asserting that global warming is a hoax. That part’s complicated, to be sure, because they’re doing two things at once: adding new oil and coal plants while ramping up wind and solar at the same time. What’s beyond dispute is that in every advanced technological industry, they innovate faster and bring prices down more quickly than we do.

The U.S. has consistently been losing its standing and influence in the global South, first because its institutions for supporting economic development (the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO) come with strings attached that, in the end, leave countries spending more on debt than education and health and reap profits for us. Second, those stipulations are always about privatizing public services and industries to pave the way for U.S. investors. It’s never about what’s good for the countries seeking help. In most cases, a small local elite becomes rich while inequality increases. Meanwhile, China’s approach to development assistance focuses on infrastructure: electric grids, roads, transportation, sanitation, and water. No wonder they’re gaining the edge in Latin America and Africa. Not that anyone should fully trust their motives, but the numbers don’t lie. Chinese-supported countries are faring better than US-supported countries, which are mired in debt and have higher rates of income inequality.

I’m hardly naive. I know well that China is imperfect, to say the least. The international community condemns their human rights record. They may well have dropped the ball and responded poorly to COVID with grave global consequences. They steal intellectual property. They’re overly strict about media and dissent. They’re poised to try to take over Taiwan. They make economic missteps from time to time, like their recent overproduction of housing construction. And their history is littered with imperialist aspirations and regional aggressions. China is a real dick sometimes.

You don’t have to be a China apologist to recognize that America’s anti-China whining is a little hypocritical, and frankly dumb. Dropping the ball on COVID? Spotty human rights record? Wants to take over other countries? Strict on media and dissent? Economic missteps? Imperialist aspirations and aggressions? We’ve done all that. We’re still doing it. Who are we kidding?

If I don’t hate China and Chinese goods, it’s not because I love all the bad stuff they do, which we also do. The story of American production of oil and gas, cars, machines, steel, and agriculture - and tools - that people are so nostalgic about is one of intense federal subsidies, the very kind of subsidies that poor nations are prohibited from using to protect local producers if they accept IMF or World Bank loans, because we want to make sure our subsidized goods can outcompete them in their markets. In the streets, that’s called a racket.

We won a World War, rebuilt Europe, invested in global aid, made the U.S. dollar the global currency, and used it all as leverage to screw people over. Meanwhile, China has been taking notes. Their approach to global economic development, known in some circles as the Beijing Consensus, would be radically different from ours, the Washington Consensus. Let us invest, they say to developing countries, and we’ll do you right. We say, throw your poor and your working class under the bus, and we’ll make a handful of you rich, and us as well. If Iran or Venezuela or some other country nationalizes their oil industry, robbing Exxon or BP (British Petroleum) of the opportunity to profit from it, we’ll go to war with them. If unions demand higher wages amid increases in worker productivity, we say hell no and take measures that lead to wage deflation at the bottom and soaring wealth at the top.

I don’t like that. And I’m not saying China’s a saint, not by any means, but when I compare the pro/con list, I see one country that seems to always do right by the rich and another whose goal seems to be social uplift, domestically and abroad. I also see one country systematically dismantling its expertise in a variety of professions and industries, including manufacturing tools and the like, and another hell-bent on developing that expertise and making what it produces affordable. I’m not saying China’s good, just better at what they do. Turns out that state-run capitalism is more efficient than unregulated capitalism. With the kind of economic master planning that the US is so averse to, you can steer it in whatever direction you want, whether for the working class, robotics, or world-class AI. Or all of the above.

Had Trump not won again, I’m fairly certain the US would have kept China in check. As it stands, I think we’re screwed. The question is how bad that is. Their middle class is growing, not shrinking like ours, and they make better tools for cheaper. I absolutely hate a lot of what they do, but do I hate it anymore than what we do, or Netanyahu (separate from the Jewish people)? I hate them equally. I might be an anti-state anarchist at heart. But I guess if your stated goal is to buttress the working class by making really good and inexpensive woodworking tools, I can get behind that. American workers aren’t making them anymore, and that’s our fault. We threw our workers under the bus a long time ago.

‍Will I buy a high-precision Chinese-made miter gauge for our table saw for a quarter of the cost of an American-made version of similar quality? I won’t say I’m not torn, but I’m leaning toward yes. And if I could buy a Chinese electric car for $18k, shoot yeah I would. The US won’t let me because they know how screwed we’d be, and already are.

The point of some of these posts is to show how even something as mundane as woodworking can send me into the mire and muck of some super messy moral and ethical quandaries. It’s not to persuade anyone of anything, but to share and be open with you. I don’t know if my current take is right. I never do. It’s like woodworking. The point is to think, ask, do, and repeat, in the hope, eventually, of a more satisfying outcome. The value of craft isn’t that different than the craft of shaping our values.

Meanwhile, as I ponder the purchase of that Chinese-made miter gauge, I’ll become acquainted with this beautiful, USA-made, “Best” jointer that we picked up for a few beers today. Cheers, y’all.

Nota bene: This post was heavily and aggressively editorialized by F.M. Kim, who had strong feelings. Korean-Chinese relations are, to say the least, historically fraught.