On Harbor Freight, and China in general.

[dogmush]

We've talked a lot on this forum about HF as a source for specialized tools one might not otherwise afford, and I myself am a patron, and like many of their things.

When I was posting in the Log Spliter thread that Ben started I mentioned Preditor engines (which have agood reputation for value) are a direct rip off of Honda engines.  So direct, in fact, that many Honda parts fit on the HF engine.  This is far from the only design or idea that manufacturers in China have flat stolen and sold back to us.  The electronics market is awash in copies.

In general, I like the ability to buy cheap stuff I want.  I'm looking at CNC's from china that I can *just* afford, whereas a Tormach or Haas is so far outside my hobby budget as to be a dream.  I'm also not against paying for the amount of quality you need.  Wrenches, for example, are pretty much open source at this point.  I use a 39mm wrench like once every 3 years.  I don't need a Sanp-On for that.  I'm glad that the HF wrench exists so I can have that tool in my box when I need it, without sinking $100 into it.  Things like my collet set are another example.  Yes, they have more runout than a nice American made set, but they meet my needs, and I could afford them. The R8 Taper is an industry standard, so it's not exactly stolen.

Thinking about those engines during my run this evening really made me ponder though.  What with world events recently I think I am a LOT less likely to just wink and look away from straight up stolen IP making China money than I was this time last year.  Even if it means I get less stuff, or less capable stuff.  I'm not saying "Only Buy American!"  but I'm thinking there should be a difference in a cheap widget that is a standard design, and straight up stolen designs, or cirucits and software.

Just thinking out loud a little bit, but I 'm pretty sure my "put up with China because I want cheap stuff" meter dropped quite a few notches this year.

[MechAg94]

I think it is something I will pay more attention to and try to make changes on if I can.  I bought a couple bandanas yesterday just to use as a makeshift mask occasionally.  Made in China of course.  

I heard someone say Tyson chicken was either owned by Chinese interests or did some of its meat processing in China.  That didn't make much sense to me.  Do any of you know about that?

[Perd Hapley]

I think it is something I will pay more attention to and try to make changes on if I can.  

Same here. I don't know how much Chinese I can cut out of my consumption, but I may start to pay more attention to it.

[Ben]

I think about it too. It's a hard choice because things like the Predator engines and Icon tools at HF are pretty darn good quality. Plus, otherwise, how the *expletive deleted*ck do I avoid Chinese stuff when every damn American company uses Chinese parts and labor? I mean, even stuff like "made in the USA" Carhartt has Chinese origins for some of their lines.

I'd be happy to pay a little more for US, or at least non-Chinese goods, but it's difficult to do. Then there is stuff like Dogmush mentioned. I know nothing about CNC machines, but I reckon they are a good example. If something expensive costs 50% more made in the USA, sending it even more out of my price range, do I do without, or go into debt?

[dogmush]

Ben I did some googling on log splitters before replying to your thread.

HF:  Chinese, and stolen engine designs: $800
TSC: Chinese, but kholer engine (engine is probably crappier than HF, but not stolen)$1100
Northstar: "Assembled" in the US, real Honda engine $1500
Iron and Oak brand: Built in the US, by US company, Honda Engine: $2900


That's a hell of a price delta, and why I didn't mention it in that thread.  At that level for a lot of folks it'll be "use the one with the stolen design or split by hand".

Not any real good answers, just pondering.  THe old adage about how much it's worth to look yourself in the mirror comes to mind.

Red Dot sights are the other obvious place that all of us are aware of.

[RoadKingLarry]

I've been fairly hardcore anti- Made in China particularly for stuff that used to be made in USA. For stuff that has generally been made overseas anyway I wasn't quite as particular. I've got some camera flash gear that is reverse engineered from Canon gear that is actually pretty good at less than a quarter of the Canon price as well as some China made manual speed lights that are darn good. I don't think I'll even consider such any longer.

When I bought my tractor 9 years ago I learned that at the time there were no small tractors being built in the US. I had a choice of US brands made in China, Japanese brands made in China or Chinese brands made in Malaysia.
I bought a Kioti, made in South Korea.

It's time to buy American when possible even if it costs a little extra.

[Ben]

Ben I did some googling on log splitters before replying to your thread.

HF:  Chinese, and stolen engine designs: $800
TSC: Chinese, but kholer engine (engine is probably crappier than HF, but not stolen)$1100
Northstar: "Assembled" in the US, real Honda engine $1500
Iron and Oak brand: Built in the US, by US company, Honda Engine: $2900


That's a hell of a price delta, and why I didn't mention it in that thread.  At that level for a lot of folks it'll be "use the one with the stolen design or split by hand".

Not any real good answers, just pondering.  THe old adage about how much it's worth to look yourself in the mirror comes to mind.

Red Dot sights are the other obvious place that all of us are aware of.

Good examples on your log splitter research. I absolutely can't afford the $2900 one. Or rather, I can afford it, but it's just not cost-effective for me. At nearly $2000 more, it would make me factor in my dirt cheap electricity and just go without the wood stove, even though the heat pump always seems to pump out "cool" hot air. I might then only collect enough wood to burn for ambience or emergency use, and just split by hand until I get too old for it (which seems to be fast approaching).

[makattak]

I've been a occasional buyer at Harbor Freight. I will occasionally shop there still, if necessary, but I, too, am making a point of not buying from China.

I just pulled out my non-Harbor Freight generator, a Champion one. "Designed and Engineered in the USA and North America!" Oh look, made in China.

I was recently looking for a new guitar and amp. I picked a guitar made in Korea (from an American Company.) The company also has lines made in the USA (more expensive than I need for at least the foreseeable future), Japan (more expensive than I need for at least the foreseeable future- it's also top of the line, just different lines), and China.

I specifically avoided the Chinese made lines.

Looking at Amps, I looked at a lot of "American" companies... who make all their amps in China. It looks like I'll be going with a "Japanese" amp, made in Malaysia.

I'm not going to ONLY buy American, but I am going to stop buying China, even if it's from an "American" company.

I've also noticed it's not easy to determine where things are made. It's possible and as you can tell, I've done it, but it's not out there on their websites.

I'm going to do the same for all my purchases, where possible. If it costs me 50% more, so be it. But some products cannot be had aside from Chinese-made because they have driven out all competitors with anti-competitive practices that would get a private company sued. (Oh, and slave labor. I don't think a private company would get away with that, either.)

[cordex]

I bought a Kioti, made in South Korea.

My friend bought one of those and had the engine crap out in under a year.  The dealership wanted something absurd to import a new engine.  I tried to get him to take a crack at fixing it himself, but he was done with the whole thing and sold it as was.

As far as cheap Chinese crap tools, and knockoff designs, I find that as I age I'm looking more toward quality and less toward quantity.  I think that is in part because I have more money now than when I was first buying tools, and in part because I've used enough crap tools for enough years to realize that there is actually (often) a difference.  To a point, anyway.

[Kingcreek]

I have bought a few thinks at HF but I try not to most of the time.
My heavy duty 1/2" impact driver needed impact sockets. Cheapest I could find for a set was $80 for a cheap farm store imported set. Until I went to HF and got a decent quality set of 37 impact sockets and extensions for $29 minus 20% off with one of those not very rare coupons. Yesterday I bought 1 socket at the farm store, in a size not in my set... $8.49... for an impact socket made in USA.

[Ben]

I bought a Kioti, made in South Korea.

I went with a South Korean LS. The small (and maybe big?) JDs are all made in China now. I'll take Korean quality over Chinese any day. The one thing you lose is the JD dealer network, but there's always mail order. The LS actually runs very well, the only issue being the damn TierIV pollution crap, which is a problem with everyone now. Mine sets off the engine lights and alarms every time it goes into regen. My tractor guy just tells me to ignore it, which seems to work.

[Boomhauer]

My main expenses these days are tools. I try to buy Taiwan when I can, Chinese when I can’t. American made is so far out of realism price wise (I’m at work to make money not spend money). Sure there is some US stuff on the secondary market but what I need tends to be a lot more sparse (specialty tools for my industry). Chinese quality has finally come up to acceptable levels it’s hard to pass the savings up.

[Boomhauer]

I went with a South Korean LS. The small (and maybe big?) JDs are all made in China now. I'll take Korean quality over Chinese any day. The one thing you lose is the JD dealer network, but there's always mail order. The LS actually runs very well, the only issue being the damn TierIV pollution crap, which is a problem with everyone now. Mine sets off the engine lights and alarms every time it goes into regen. My tractor guy just tells me to ignore it, which seems to work.

I will caution you that if the ECMs are set up the way they are supposed to be some faults eventually trigger derates to make it impossible to use the tractor until fixed

[AZRedhawk44]

China backlash stopped me today from buying a cheapie little bivvy hammock for backpacking and moto camping.

My brother linked it on FB, and while it looked intriguing and my impulse buy button might have gone off under other circumstances, I abstained purely because of my regard for Chinese imports in light of this situation.  

As for HF stuff... I have a few things from them.  I've been disappointed by a good bit of it though.  Their clamps and "vice grips" are utter shyt.  Each of my vehicles has a cheap set of HF wrenches in a toolkit put together for it, though I don't trust their socket wrenches and go Stanley or something of that tier for the vehicle kit.  Probably still made in China, just not from one of those Amazon vendors with the product name in all caps and changes vendor names each month while selling the same IP cloning crap.  My good ratchets for home use are Taiwanese.  I like buying Taiwanese.  It tweaks the ChiComs.  And it tends to be pretty darn good stuff.

Watching AvE, my power tool purchases have steered more towards Bosch and other European brands and away from DeWalt or Milwaukee, who heavily favor China for production.

This last fall, I bought a Husqvarna FE 250 dual sport over other potential offerings.  KTM's are starting to be made in China and China of course released a KTM clone (GPX 250) the second they got their hands on KTM blueprints.  Lots of HondaYamaSaki stuff is either fully built in China or componentry is and then assembled elsewhere.  Huskies are made in Sweden.  I was considering a Beta, but evidently it's Chinese investors that bought the old Beta brand and tooling in Italy.  Unsure how much of the bike is Italian versus Chinese.  Didn't want to find out.

I'm watching BMW, Triumph, and others closely.  Triumph has factories in India and Thailand and Brazil.  But some of their bikes are still Brit-built (not that that's much of a recommendation).  Harley Davidson has spun up an Indian factory in the last few years.  Royal Enfield is in India.  Watching to see who goes into China, because I've put a lot of rough miles on my 2013 Triumph Tiger.  Depending on how it behaves over the next year, I may replace it with a new bike.  But that won't be Chinese.  I trust it right now for a ride to the Arctic, but unsure if I will trust it next year for the same ride now that I'm postponing it.

[Ben]

I will caution you that if the ECMs are set up the way they are supposed to be some faults eventually trigger derates to make it impossible to use the tractor until fixed

Good to know. Mine seem to occur because the DPF sometimes "overfills" and doesn't turn on when it's supposed to. I forget the percentages, but let's say it's supposed to turn on at 100% (or every 50 hours)  but sometimes doesn't do it until 150%, and it goes into inhibited mode for like five minutes, then all the lights go off except the "normal regen" lights, and all is good again, and 20 minutes later, regen is done.

It's been better since I started doing everything at over 2000RPM. Sometimes just getting to where I was going, I was driving at 1500RPM, and I guess that helped fill the thing up. There was a bunch of info on the LS forums about it.

[charby]

I think it is something I will pay more attention to and try to make changes on if I can.  I bought a couple bandanas yesterday just to use as a makeshift mask occasionally.  Made in China of course.  

I heard someone say Tyson chicken was either owned by Chinese interests or did some of its meat processing in China.  That didn't make much sense to me.  Do any of you know about that?

Smithfield is Chinese owned, I think the only pork we'd get that was handled in china would be shelf stable stuff. I don't see any savings in taking fresh pork to china and having fresh pork sent back.

Packers have done a great job in taking any skill out of butchering at the retail location with going to boxed meat instead of carcasses going being shipped out. Unions were pushed out in the 70s when the old verticle packing houses were obsolete and the new horizontal plants opened up. Most skilled labor has been eliminated in the packing plants. The guy who did this all spent a lot years in prison because how he broke all the unions. Google Currier J. Holman if your interested.

[lupinus]

Also I've noticed that a lot of brands and items are advertising that nice big flag logo. But when you look it's not made in the US, it's "assembled" in the US from "global parts". Which hey it's nice that you paid someone to do (probably) the bare minimum for that designation, but it's still not made in the US when the majority of the manufacturing was done in China and you slapped a part or two together to make the finished unit.

Also part of the problem is how much of the tooling just isn't here any more to manufacture these things. A lot of it ended up in China or elsewhere when production was moved and brands sold off.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[RoadKingLarry]

I went with a South Korean LS. The small (and maybe big?) JDs are all made in China now. I'll take Korean quality over Chinese any day. The one thing you lose is the JD dealer network, but there's always mail order. The LS actually runs very well, the only issue being the damn TierIV pollution crap, which is a problem with everyone now. Mine sets off the engine lights and alarms every time it goes into regen. My tractor guy just tells me to ignore it, which seems to work.

Mine has been almost flawless. I took delivery January 2011, it's a 2010 model so none of the BS TierIV BS. The only mechanical issue I've had was a loose bolt in the joystick control for the front end loader, the dealer handed me a complete joystick mechanism when I stopped in and talked to hem about it. I didn't even use it yet, I found the loose bolt when I took it apart to fix it. I had to put a new battery in it last Summer. Other than routine maintenance that's it.
I don't use it too hard, it's only a 22hp (gross) (17.1 hp @ PTO) tractor. It competently pulls a 50" PTO tiller through my heavy clay soil. The FE loader is rated for 1500# breakout and 1000# full lift. It took me about 15 minutes of use once it was delivered to start wondering how the hell I ever lived without a FE loader.

My friend bought one of those and had the engine crap out in under a year.  The dealership wanted something absurd to import a new engine.  I tried to get him to take a crack at fixing it himself, but he was done with the whole thing and sold it as was.

The engine should have been still in warranty if it was less than a year old.

[tokugawa]

Hmmm.  Now multiply this thread by a few Billion people pissed off at China and one would say they have a severe problem coming up.

 A lot of the HF hand tools, wrenches, sockets etc are Taiwan made and pretty good.
 I just bought a set of ER 25 collets, imported by a US firm, but made in Taiwan- the guy laughed when I told him I was avoiding chicom crap. Did not use such complimentary terms...
Ad says they will hold .0003" for runout.
 Some of the stuff from India seems really good, some is utter crap.

[HankB]

Enough with the big ticket items like tractors and log splitters.

WHERE can I get a damn TOASTER that's not made in China?

Edited to add:

Found one Made in USA.



https://www.wasserstrom.com/restaurant-supplies-equipment/toastmaster%C2%AE-tp409-120v-standard-4-slice-pop-up-bread-toaster-370530

The Toastmaster TP409, a 4-slice toaster with a list price of $1429, currently available at a discounted price of $785.95

[bedlamite]

Enough with the big ticket items like tractors and log splitters.

WHERE can I get a damn TOASTER that's not made in China?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxAbz9mfaj0

[Pb]

Enough with the big ticket items like tractors and log splitters.

WHERE can I get a damn TOASTER that's not made in China?

Edited to add:

Found one Made in USA.



https://www.wasserstrom.com/restaurant-supplies-equipment/toastmaster%C2%AE-tp409-120v-standard-4-slice-pop-up-bread-toaster-370530

The Toastmaster TP409, a 4-slice toaster with a list price of $1429, currently available at a discounted price of $785.95

Look in the thrift stores... you may be able to find some old American made appliances that are superior to Chinese garbage.  That's how we replaced our toaster over.

[Ben]

So just curious, using the example with prices that Dogmush already provided above, how far would you go to avoid China? $1000 vs $2900 is a significant amount. We probably need to look at production costs in the US. Certainly we can call out child and near-slave labor in China regarding the cheap prices, but it seems in fairness we should also look at why US prices are so much more.

Is that $2900 log splitter really worth that, and is the quality that much better? Or are we paying for unions, government regulations and red tape, business taxes, etc.? Again, using the log splitter example, if we were to look at the exact same specs, one built in China and one built in the US, personally, I would be happy paying say, $1500 for a US one versus $1000 for a Chinese one. But paying nearly three times more on a big ticket item like that? I don't think we can lay all the blame on Chinese labor for the cost delta, and I would be hard-pressed to call a guy out for getting the Chinese one instead. $2000 pays for a lot of food, gas, insurance, property taxes, etc.

[MillCreek]

Somewhat related, but I roast my own coffee.  I buy green coffee beans from all over the world.  Hawaii makes a big deal about their Kona coffee.  Buying Kona green beans generally runs $ 25-35 per pound.  I can buy the finest coffee from Africa, Asia and Central America for $ 5-8 per pound from my typical vendors.  The Kona coffee is not 300-400% better than my favorites from Ethiopia or Sumatra.  Marketing mystique aside, what you are paying for from Kona is the US labor and regulatory costs, as opposed to those same costs from third-world nations in Africa or Asia.

[makattak]

Somewhat related, but I roast my own coffee.  I buy green coffee beans from all over the world.  Hawaii makes a big deal about their Kona coffee.  Buying Kona green beans generally runs $ 25-35 per pound.  I can buy the finest coffee from Africa, Asia and Central America for $ 5-8 per pound from my typical vendors.  The Kona coffee is not 300-400% better than my favorites from Ethiopia or Sumatra.  Marketing mystique aside, what you are paying for from Kona is the US labor and regulatory costs, as opposed to those same costs from third-world nations in Africa or Asia.

I just wanted to highlight that because this is a significant issue.

We put all kinds of regulations on AMERICAN workers because the left is so concerned about safety and the environment... and then ship those jobs off to somewhere else that will be far more dangerous to the workers and the environment than the same job, even without the onerous U.S. regulations, would be in the U.S.

But, like electric cars, the messy parts happen somewhere else, so the liberals are happy that they "cared."

(Related: it's similar to how illegals are allowed to just ignore regulations on housing, transportation, etc... that Americans are required to follow.)