Yesterday, Hillary Clinton toured North Carolina with an entourage of senior retired military officers to outline solutions to strengthen our military. Earlier this month, Sen. Clinton was in Indiana, the state that holds its primary on the same day as North Carolina, visiting Allison Transmission plant that builds transmissions for military vehicles. During her visit, Clinton outlined a plan to limit the Defense Department’s ability to buy foreign-made products and would launch a “comprehensive review of our defense industrial base” to determine “where U.S. capabilities are lacking.” Her argument was that when our military relies on foreign manufacturers, we are not only outsourcing American jobs, we are also outsourcing our security.

It has become evident that the U.S. regulatory agencies or U.S. corporations themselves are simply not capable of ensuring the quality standards when the goods are manufactured in far away foreign factories. The cases of unsafe imports from countries like China, threatening the health and, sometimes even lives (as is the case with tainted Heparin) of the American consumers come to the public’s attention almost every month. It’s not a stretch to think that ensuring the quality of equipment our troops rely on in battle will be more difficult if it is made overseas and not in our own country. And if something were to go wrong in the military the general public will be less likely to find out. That is why it is imperative that our leaders think ahead and make sure that the equipment and armor that our military uses is made in the USA.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., National Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.