I feel like a lot people on Lemmy, and people in left-leaning spaces in general, kind of have a blind spot on this one. People get that buying local is good, but not buying American.

It matters where your money goes. People complain about the soullessness of modern American life, and how hard it is to find a good job, and how democracies are backsliding around the globe, and then they buy things from China that are cheaply made and, at most, slightly better value in the long run.

This isn't me trying to be nationalist or xenophobic but whenever anyone (including me because there's no way to completely avoid it nowadays) buys Chinese goods you are supporting a government that is aggressively un-democratic, that actively supports Russia, and also has basically zero labor laws and an absolutely enormous wealth gap between the ruling class and the working class.

And yeah I get a lot of Americans are hurting right now due to inflation but the solution isn't to send money overseas. The best thing you can do for your neighbor is buy union and buy American.