Could ‘buying American’ help create jobs?
Labor Day weekend got off to a rough start this year with some pretty dismal jobs numbers. The economy created a net gain of zero jobs last month. President Obama will surely use that troubling statistic to drive home his message in his jobs speech this Thursday evening. Many different solutions have been offered to help the economy recover. Could “buying American” be the fix we need to create jobs? Anders Lewendal, a general contractor in Bozeman, Montana, is trying just that as he constructs a home built mostly from “all American” materials. Lewendal doesn’t believe that everything should be bought American. But he thinks increasing the share of American-purchased products would generate jobs – enough to shrink unemployment. Louise Story, New York Times finance and Wall Street reporter, talks about why buying American is more complicated than it might seem.
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