Do you buy USA stuff for your car, only?

Yup, we don't need them here.

 

Unions have nothing to do with the higher cost. The quality by Union labor is better quality than off shore labor. You are paying for the quality. You hit the nail on the head about government regulations.

 

That's what the UAW says.

 

I thought Unions killed the Twinkie due to higher costs.

 

Nope .... corporate raiders that picked the bones of the company clean, and then blamed the unions when it was no longer sustainable. Press releases are wonderful tools for theives to hide behind.

 

If you look at the cost to make / mfg anything it's made up of materials / labor / overhead. Pretty simple equation.
The cost of the material is pretty universal due to world commodities markets.
The rest (labor / overhead) is what makes the difference.
The fact other countries have laborers that work for peanuts with little or no safety or worker protection regulations or simple benefits is where the difference in costs lies.
The union / non-union difference is completely negligible compared to the fact that labor and overhead is so vastly different between a place like North America and China.

Ask anyone on here that works in North America what they think their labor is worth. Anyone trying to live in North America willing to work for a $1 a day?
Then ask anyone that runs a small business how much they spend on infrastructure and benefits for workers in North America. Most North American workers expect to be able to go to work in a safe environment and to be afforded basic protections. Something that doesn't factor in most cheap labor hotspots.

Head to head, there's no competition on labor cost to produce. North American companies have to rely on productivity / efficiency and a perceived (and for the most part true) superior quality in order to sell a similar product. The decision North American mfg's make in relation to production is always a trade-off between the cost to try to compete through technology / efficiency with home-grown labor vs just transplanting the whole works to some cheap labor country.