Trumpeting "Buy American".

The letter from Michael L. Lenahan of Resource Recovery Corp., that appeared in the Letterbox of the December 2003 issue of MODERN CASTING hit home hard. We have been a representative of one of the larger municipal casting foundries for more than 42 years and have been a big pusher of the "Buy American" cause in our company literature and customer proposals. We had known for quite a few years of the import castings coming from the South and making their way further North. Our competitors then and now are American foundries.

Since the foundry we represented and distributed for cancelled our contract three years ago and turned to a small foundry that buys foreign castings, we have learned a lot about the foreign market and suppliers. After research, I do not believe that there is a single major U.S. municipal foundry that is not selling a foreign procured casting. Solution? There is none! The castings from foreign foundries are as good both physically, interchangeability and sometimes metallurgically superior to the American-made castings.

Is there anything we can do about foreign labor rates, environmental factors, work safety and healthcare to make the playing field more level? Not really. We were the last distributors of castings in our region to sell only American made castings. I will tell you with a broken spirit that we have joined into supplying foreign castings that meet and exceed the American standards and are delivering these to ever-accepting municipalities. We do still distribute American-made castings, but their numbers are fewer and they are not put above a foreign casting. The American municipal foundries would have rolled over and died if not for the I.V. of foreign castings.

TOM SHAUGHNESSY

VICE PRESIDENT

J.W. SHAUGHNESSY & SONS, INC., LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY