In America even the flag is made in China.

Frau Fiber comments on the impact of globalization on American patriotism.

More than 200 years ago, the Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross, helped to create the first American flag. Legend says she impressed Gen. George Washington by fashioning a five-pointed star with a single snip of her scissors. Today’s American flag has thirteen stripes, 50 stars, and a tiny, often unnoticed, Made in China label.

 

Today the American flag, like most products Americans consume, has gone global. And as Americans wave their flags today, let’s consider some statics about the origins of these flags.

 

 

• America has imported $10.9 million worth of American flags in the past year.
• The 53-star flags baffle consumers.  Joyce Doody, director of membership services at the National Flag Foundation, a patriotic education association in Pittsburgh states “we presume that they were made in another country.”
• China has exported $5 million worth of flags
• Taiwan and Korea have also made hundreds of thousands in recent years, according to data from the US Department of Commerce, the US Treasury, and the US International Trade Commission.
• Shanghai Flag & Tent Works exported about $1 million worth of American flags.
• American companies also produce more than 100 million flags of all types each year.
• Probably less than 5 percent of American flags sold are made overseas.
• Chinese-made American flags account for about 20 percent of American flags sold at the United States Flag Store.

 

Concluding this research, I am lead to believe the Chinese do a better job with small flags, while the small flags you will see in parades around the country today are made in America tend to fall apart.