Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
In all the shops on The Royal Mile and in Glasgow I didn't see a single US-made or Canadian-made bagpipe, sporran, or kilt, but many thousands of Indian and Pakistani ones. I think the benefit to the native Scots craftspeople of a ban would far outweigh the loss of a few sales to US and Canadian craftspeople (who after all are not the people I'm trying to support, good people though they be).
A local economy can be made strong by using locally grown, manufactured, imported raw, unfinished goods and supplies, then selling and exporting finished and further refined product. Buy local, sell abroad. Works for any economy. Even works for services such as financial instruments. A national economy can be strengthened or weakened by its procurement and disposals of goods, and services, Product and labor, Water in dry places and the amount of gold in a claim.
Those shop owners are taking advantage of a capital driven free enterprise economy. Never mind that they risk being taxed out of business. They resort to drastic measures to increase profitability while keeping a wary thumb close to the scale.