All things being equal, many Americans would prefer to buy U.S. made products.

The problem is that things are often not equal.

As an overwhelming amount of manufacturing capacity has moved overseas,

usually to places where labor is cheaper and regulations not as strict, it can be harder to

afford goods made entirely in the U.S. And that's if we can find them at all. From KERA in Dallas,

this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. My guest set out to understand why it is so

difficult for American entrepreneurs to stick with domestic production. Her new book explores

those challenges through the lens of an idealistic young couple with a deceptively simple

ambition to set up a factory in this country, paying decent wages and benefits, and produce good

quality hoodie sweatshirts worthy of the Made in USA label. Rachel Slade is a journalist and author

of the book Making It in America, the almost impossible quest to manufacture in the USA and how

it got that way. Rachel, welcome to think. Thank you. It's great to be here.

You quote a statistic at the start of the book that I'm still really amazed by California's

two busiest ports are bringing in many millions of metric tons every year, and that's just like

a third of the import that is happening in this

country? Correct. Yeah, it's really quite astonishing how much comes through our ports. And of course,

California has the largest ports because stuff is coming from Asia. When stuff comes from Asia,

it usually stops in California unless it goes through the

Panama Canal. And now they've widened the canal to accommodate larger ships that are coming

up then through New Orleans, New York, Savannah, and my hometown of Boston.

So regardless of trade policies that the president is working on now,

no one is expecting this to diminish anytime soon. We need things. I mean, that's a fact. And

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