We Need Flexibility in Country of Origin Labelling for Online Products

Simon LesterSome consumers prefer to buy domestically ‐​made products rather than foreign ones, due to a personally held belief in economic nationalism. That ’s their choice, and this sort of “personal protectionism” — prohibiting themselves from buying foreign products, in a sense — should not be equated with government intervention in the market, through tariffs or similar measures, to push people towards buying domestic products.Sometimes the government tries to push in a more subtle manner than tariffs, taking advantage of people ’s personal preferences by requiring that the country of origin of a product be identified so that consumers can more easily engage in their personal protectionism. This type of measure can be constructed in a way that is intended to directly raise the costs of selling foreign products, and in that way helping domestic competitors, as my colleague Inu Manak and I wrote about with regard to beef labelinghere. But in other cases, it may have less of an impact. The measure requires the label, which does have an overall cost for producers, but other than that simply leaves it up to consumers to decide what to do.The same concept may now be coming toonline sales, where a piece of Congressional legislation that has been put forward “would require online sellers to clearly state where their products are made.” This type of legislation tends to be pushed by domestic industries who are looking for way...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs