Effect change, buy American appliances

I agree with the letter from Bill Cooper of Geneva concerning buying products make in the USA. It is difficult in our current market. Many of us have written letters to our political leaders asking for attention to this problem and have gotten nothing but reasons such as free trade and no new taxes as to why nothing can be done.

Therefore, it is up to us as consumers to take action with our pocketbooks. General slogans like “Buy American” won't cut it as there is no one specific target to use to show our purchase power. I have researched many products and I think I may have one where if everyone united it could demonstrate our feeling of buying products made here. That area is appliances such as washers, dryers and refrigerators. If everyone bought only the American-made brands and rejected the foreign brands it would send a very loud message to the manufacturing community. And since retail CEO's only wish to sell products that will make money for their companies you can be sure that they will take notice.

I use this as an example because it's a product we all have to buy on occasion, and it is one of the few I could find where a domestic and foreign company were head-to-head in a market with few competitors.

As a country we can send this message much like we did politically over the past few years when we threw out the Republicans for doing nothing, then threw out their Democratic replacements for their inaction.

We can do the same in the marketplace.

Bill Getchius

St. Charles