Foreign Faults

I don't know; maybe it's just me, but I can't shake the feeling that part of the outrage over the oil spill in the U.S. has to do with the fact that it was caused by a foreign company, namely, British Petroleum. Of course, I'm not saying that had it been an American company, people and the government would've just said "oops!", but I think that there would've been more of a concern than a tirade at the company.

The economy is bad, so, there's a lot of resentment against foreigners, either because they are seen as taking jobs away from Americans or because of the success of a company such as BP. We've seen the same thing in the Toyota case, which has been milked for all it's worth to the American car manufacturers. Any negative news from China is played up. The underlying message is the same: foreigners make faulty products or provide unreliable services. Buy American!

Yeah, right.

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