Episode 32: The "Made in USA" Label Is Basically Meaningless Now

Everyone assumes "Made in USA" means a product came entirely from inside the country. It doesn't, and the actual legal bar has been getting lower for over a century.

This episode traces how "Made in" labels started as a punishment (Britain trying to shame Germany in 1887) and ended up as one of the most manipulated phrases in American retail. From the FTC's real "all or virtually all" standard, to New Balance inventing its own 70% threshold, to Sam Walton writing a memoir called "Made in America" while Walmart quietly became one of the biggest drivers of the overseas supply chain that label was supposed to guard against, this is the story of a label that survived long after what it promised stopped being true.