About

For many decades, the United States has spoken for freedom but acted against it. We have allowed ourselves to grow accustomed to easily obtained goods at the cost of our fellow countrymen and have enabled the exploitation of other nations' working classes. As a nation we fought a bloody civil war against slavery, and yet we import goods from overseas that are made in slave-like conditions. We spend billions of dollars protecting the environment, and yet we import trillions of dollars' worth of products from nations that destroy it for their gain. Our taxes go toward social programs for those who lose their jobs when companies move overseas, yet we've grown so accustomed to lower costs that we flinch at price differences for goods made domestically.

We pride ourselves on being the most powerful nation in the world, yet each year we shut down more and more manufacturing infrastructure, leading us to become dependent on other nations for critical commodities.

Balanced Scales exists because we believe that the scales of global trade are unbalanced. For the U.S., this includes—but is not limited to—loss of jobs, culture and camaraderie, sense of purpose, infrastructure, and strategic independence. For the exploited citizens of other nations, it includes unfair wages, unsafe working conditions, destruction of the local environment and waterways, child labor and slavery, and oppression of certain people groups.

Additionally, because Balanced Scales believes that some of these practices are moral wrongs, we believe those who commit them should not be supported through our purchasing choices.

Balanced Scales aims to fight against unbalanced trade by developing an easy-to-use catalog of products made in the United States. While not all products will be entirely made in the U.S., we do our best to prioritize those that use fully U.S.-based labor and materials, or companies that conduct the majority of production domestically and have exhausted all reasonable efforts to achieve 100% domestic production. In the future, we hope to be fully transparent about why certain materials or processes are still completed overseas.