What stops manufacturers from printing in their products : “Made in country X” instead of any other country?
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All the damned red tape. Forms, inspections, verifications, lint traps to catch the slippery ones. All kinds of stuff. It’s hard to slip one by them.
In Australia there’s ‘made in Australia’ labels on products but they have to put a percentage of ingredients that were used in Australia. I’ve seen some that are like 10% made in Australia lol.
I’m more curious why some products have to have it written conspicuously and others don’t. Like why aren’t Fords and GM cars labeled “Made in Mexico” on the bumper?
It violates the rules of customs of the country that manufactures those products.
My mom was a customs officer and used to check especially these markings to ensure that the product correctly specifies the country.
These days a product has supply chains extending to dozens of countries and most likely the final assembly happens in China and to a smaller extent in Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.
For example Apple to make its iPhone works with suppliers in 43 countries and six continents to make its products, and the chain gets even more complicated when you break it down into raw materials.
Not much. Yes there are penalties to pay but there are also a lot of work arounds. All you need to add a label “made in X” is that some part of the product is made in X country.
My client is a multinational FMCG company who owns the biggest condom brand in the world. They found that people were a bit weird buying condoms made in foreign countries, so they make the condom wrappers in each country they operate in and can then label them so that it looks like the condoms are all made locally when they’re not
Some logistics companies set up branches in countries that are not part of EU, import goods from China and relabel them as produced inside EU and then sell them through amazon and so on
Marks and Spencer, a very popular clothing retailer in the UK was found, in the 1990s to be selling garments being made in Morroco by child labour and labelled as Made in UK.
This was uncovered by Granada TV. M&S blamed the supplier, said they were unaware of the situation, sued Granada for Libel, and won.
For a little history look up “Made in Germany” wiki. It was the brits idea to get products labeled, so that people had a choice. In the end, Germany just made better products and from there it got associated with quality.
But the whole point of it, was to stop Germany making stuff with British manufacturing marks
If it is a product being imported into the US and its nation of origin is misrepresented on the labeling the entire shipment will be seized at the port of entry by US customs. Good luck getting it back.
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