My country of birth is small enough that practically none of the nontrivial products I want to buy or consume are made locally, so hearing about this sort of pr

My country of birth is small enough that practically none of the nontrivial products I want to buy or consume are made locally, so hearing about this sort of preference (e.g. for "made in $my_country" products) makes me think. Since I can't fall back on a no-brainer nationalist preference on a daily basis (except for a few locally grown vegetables) like the citizens of a country as large as the United States, what should I prefer, if anything? >Of course you would not buy a laptop from them, you don't want to give more money/power to this awful country. The approach you describe entails rating countries of manufacture based on labour/environmental/civil standards. So, without more detailed knowledge of the factories in question, an American who follows this approach should prefer a product made in (say) Germany or Sweden, rather than one made in the USA, since it could be argued that the former countries treat their workers better, and take better care of their environment. I think a reasonable proviso to this policy might be to source high-volume/frequency items locally (e.g. produce) when possible to reduce pollution from transportation (or any other wasteful overhead), assuming almost everything else is equal. Which also means that if this hypothetical American resident is close to a land border, s/he might want to buy something from Canada or Mexico rather than a U.S. state at the other end of the country.