The ultimate end market

Consumers in the United States—the ultimate end market for most basic materials produced in the U.S. or imported—have been encouraged to “buy American” in fits and starts during the past several decades.

When Japanese and German cars gained market share in the 1960s and ’70s, U.S. manufacturers put effort into convincing car buyers that buying American was critical.

Ultimately, Japanese, German and South Korean brands did not go away, though the U.S. government was successful in incentivizing the overseas firms to manufacture some of their cars in North America.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Walmart and other retailers encouraged—and some would say pressured—their vendors to manufacture goods in China or another nation that would whittle down the figure on the price tag.

Certainly, some Americans decried the effort, but even more filled up their carts and shopping bags with affordable merchandise made in China, Bangladesh and several other low-cost-of-doing-business nations.

As judged by U.S. consumer behavior for several generations, affordability and consumer preference have proven to be far higher priorities compared with country of origin.

Supporting American manufacturing at the expense of consumers only recently seems to have gained support, with both Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left and President Donald J. Trump on the right pleading for American companies and consumers to be more attentive to the notion of buying American.

“Buying local matters,” Christina Adams says in an interview about Gen Z, Millennial and consumer behavior in the U.S. posted to the McKinsey & Co. website last October. “It matters to 47 percent of the people we surveyed. That is a lot—it’s certainly not 90 percent of people, but it does matter.”

Adams says the trend goes beyond visiting “the farmer’s market on the corner,” adding that tariffs and supporting American brands are factors.

“As for what companies are doing, one is that they’re promoting domestic or locally made products,” she says.

Metals recyclers will continue to receive offers from overseas buyers for their materials, and a free and fair global market is in the best interest of most of them. At the same time, being part of a genuine rebound in U.S. manufacturing also likely gains support from most of those same recyclers.