Made in "Your Country Here" ; Is it important to you?

[Jester]

Our currency only appreciates if the buyer's currency floats too. That is not the case, AFAIK.

What gives you this impression? I'm going to assume China, because they're the only one of our major trading partners without a free-floating currency. About 90% of Canadian imports come from countries with free floating currencies - and the other 10% are coming from China, which is keeping its currency *down*, rather than up, and would be only too happy to see our own currency appreciate. (Which we won't let it do, for fear of losing parity with the US.)

Our largest trading partner by miles and miles is the USA. Our central bank tries to keep the $US/$CDN within certain bounds, but that choice is driven by our own policy preference, which we can hardly blame on anyone else.

Regardless, the trade logic still holds, and if China chooses to hoard Canadian and US dollars, then they're welcome to. Eventually they'll have to release those dollars, and our exports to them will increase.

You have still not convinced me that buying locally made items would not keep and/or create local jobs.

I'm not sure I'm the one with the case to make, but I've tried as hard as I can - trade works. If we sell our stuff to someone, someone (maybe not the same someone, but someone) will end up buying from us, and vice versa. Think about the alternative extreme case - could we really increase global employment if we broke up all countries into tiny non-trading autarkies? All goods would be bought and sold locally, but it would be disastrous for everyone.

What's the case, accounting for all flows, that says Canada would be better off if we bought and sold only to/from ourselves?

And it is certain that a personal policy of buying the cheapest product will export the environmental damage. *

Frankly, if we're talking solely about environmental damage, all countries should probably sever their trading relationships with Canada, post haste. We're among the world's worst offenders, in deforestation, in carbon pollution, in the generation of trash and waste. And we, as ethical consumers, should buy from everyone else, rather than ourselves. (Unfortunately, neither of those things would make a lot of difference, for the reasons I already outlined above - exports balance imports in the long run, whether that's 4% of your economy, like the US circa 1905, or 50%, like the UK.)

In the meantime, I intend to keep buying local as much as I can.

I'm still not seeing the case for why, unless "buy local" is just shorthand for "buy environmentally friendly," or "buy with a social conscience," which, as an Albertan (well, expat) with an environmentalist streak, sounds like a bad joke. Not every locality is better than every other, by definition.

-Jester