Why are so few watches "made in USA"?

WW2 was a major factor

There is a book to be written about this subject.

No, the Quartz Crisis did not kill off the American watch industry. No, the "Swiss Cartel" did not kill off the American watch industry. Structural changes in the American and world economy made it too expensive to produce watches in the United States.

Here is a list of the top American watch companies by volume in 1955: Elgin, Bulova, Benrus, Longines-Wittnauer, Hamilton, Gruen, Waltham, and Timex. Here is that list in 1970: Bulova, Longines-Wittnauer, Timex. Here is that list in 1980: Timex. That may be a tad unfair. In 1980 Bulova sold more watches than Timex, however, by that time they were owned by Citizen.

The Greatest American Watch Company, Waltham, declared bankruptcy in 1958. In the same year Gruen sold off all of its assets. Elgin, the largest American company by far, declared bankruptcy in 1968. Hamilton bought Buren and moved to Switzerland in 1969. Benrus' story is a bit murky, but by the early 1970's they had been sold. Timex struggled but captured market share. It remained afloat because it owned Polaroid. Longines-Wittnauer wasn't really a company. It was a partnership that allowed both companies to grab part of the American market as something exotic and Swiss. Bulova tried to buy their way out of trouble. They bought Univeral Geneve and Wittnauer. They tried to buy Omega. In the end Citizen gave them an offer that they couldn't refuse.

The biggest American watch brands were either bankrupt or nearly so before the quartz movement was invented or marketed. So, that wasn't it.

This comment is too long already. I wrote some about it here and further back in the WC archives. Tariff policy does come into play. Swiss industrial policy does too. The disruptions and shift in production of World War Two is more responsible. Fun fact: Elgin and Waltham spun out their fuse, gage, and industrial timer divisions that had been formed during the war. They still exist. Also a fact: Bulova, Wittnauer, and Gruen had factories in Switzerland to make movements and movement parts. Those were then shipped to the U.S. and cased here.

There is no monocausal explanation. We don't make a lot of things anymore.

There is a book to be written about this subject.

No, the Quartz Crisis did not kill off the American watch industry. No, the "Swiss Cartel" did not kill off the American watch industry. Structural changes in the American and world economy made it too expensive to produce watches in the United States.

Here is a list of the top American watch companies by volume in 1955: Elgin, Bulova, Benrus, Longines-Wittnauer, Hamilton, Gruen, Waltham, and Timex. Here is that list in 1970: Bulova, Longines-Wittnauer, Timex. Here is that list in 1980: Timex. That may be a tad unfair. In 1980 Bulova sold more watches than Timex, however, by that time they were owned by Citizen.

The Greatest American Watch Company, Waltham, declared bankruptcy in 1958. In the same year Gruen sold off all of its assets. Elgin, the largest American company by far, declared bankruptcy in 1968. Hamilton bought Buren and moved to Switzerland in 1969. Benrus' story is a bit murky, but by the early 1970's they had been sold. Timex struggled but captured market share. It remained afloat because it owned Polaroid. Longines-Wittnauer wasn't really a company. It was a partnership that allowed both companies to grab part of the American market as something exotic and Swiss. Bulova tried to buy their way out of trouble. They bought Univeral Geneve and Wittnauer. They tried to buy Omega. In the end Citizen gave them an offer that they couldn't refuse.

The biggest American watch brands were either bankrupt or nearly so before the quartz movement was invented or marketed. So, that wasn't it.

This comment is too long already. I wrote some about it here and further back in the WC archives. Tariff policy does come into play. Swiss industrial policy does too. The disruptions and shift in production of World War Two is more responsible. Fun fact: Elgin and Waltham spun out their fuse, gage, and industrial timer divisions that had been formed during the war. They still exist. Also a fact: Bulova, Wittnauer, and Gruen had factories in Switzerland to make movements and movement parts. Those were then shipped to the U.S. and cased here.

There is no monocausal explanation. We don't make a lot of things anymore.

There is a book to be written about this subject.

No, the Quartz Crisis did not kill off the American watch industry. No, the "Swiss Cartel" did not kill off the American watch industry. Structural changes in the American and world economy made it too expensive to produce watches in the United States.

Here is a list of the top American watch companies by volume in 1955: Elgin, Bulova, Benrus, Longines-Wittnauer, Hamilton, Gruen, Waltham, and Timex. Here is that list in 1970: Bulova, Longines-Wittnauer, Timex. Here is that list in 1980: Timex. That may be a tad unfair. In 1980 Bulova sold more watches than Timex, however, by that time they were owned by Citizen.

The Greatest American Watch Company, Waltham, declared bankruptcy in 1958. In the same year Gruen sold off all of its assets. Elgin, the largest American company by far, declared bankruptcy in 1968. Hamilton bought Buren and moved to Switzerland in 1969. Benrus' story is a bit murky, but by the early 1970's they had been sold. Timex struggled but captured market share. It remained afloat because it owned Polaroid. Longines-Wittnauer wasn't really a company. It was a partnership that allowed both companies to grab part of the American market as something exotic and Swiss. Bulova tried to buy their way out of trouble. They bought Univeral Geneve and Wittnauer. They tried to buy Omega. In the end Citizen gave them an offer that they couldn't refuse.

The biggest American watch brands were either bankrupt or nearly so before the quartz movement was invented or marketed. So, that wasn't it.

This comment is too long already. I wrote some about it here and further back in the WC archives. Tariff policy does come into play. Swiss industrial policy does too. The disruptions and shift in production of World War Two is more responsible. Fun fact: Elgin and Waltham spun out their fuse, gage, and industrial timer divisions that had been formed during the war. They still exist. Also a fact: Bulova, Wittnauer, and Gruen had factories in Switzerland to make movements and movement parts. Those were then shipped to the U.S. and cased here.

There is no monocausal explanation. We don't make a lot of things anymore.

say more?!

I believe that for the most part outside of making watches for the government that during WW2 watch maker had to produce other goods the government need causing them to loose market share to the Swiss who remained neutral and picked up market share. When the war was over it was hard for the US maker to tool back up to make watches and they had fallen behind in manufacturing technology as far as watches are concerned.

I believe that for the most part outside of making watches for the government that during WW2 watch maker had to produce other goods the government need causing them to loose market share to the Swiss who remained neutral and picked up market share. When the war was over it was hard for the US maker to tool back up to make watches and they had fallen behind in manufacturing technology as far as watches are concerned.

Manufacturing goes where the labour is cheapest.

Sure, in a broad sense. But manufacturing also goes where skilled labor and manufacturing capacity is available; and total production costs also depend on subsidies and tariffs, which in turn depends on industrial policy, which in turn points to governments as crucial market-makers; and that's not even factoring in consumer spending levels, price elasticity, and market monopolization, all of which in turn influence how much added labor costs a company can absorb. Etc etc. I think the point (my point at least, and maybe also the point that @Aurelian has made with an admirable command of historical knowledge), is that the demise of US watch manufacturing can neither be explained by simply pointing to the quartz crisis nor treated as the necessary consequence of rising US labor costs.

There is a book to be written about this subject.

No, the Quartz Crisis did not kill off the American watch industry. No, the "Swiss Cartel" did not kill off the American watch industry. Structural changes in the American and world economy made it too expensive to produce watches in the United States.

Here is a list of the top American watch companies by volume in 1955: Elgin, Bulova, Benrus, Longines-Wittnauer, Hamilton, Gruen, Waltham, and Timex. Here is that list in 1970: Bulova, Longines-Wittnauer, Timex. Here is that list in 1980: Timex. That may be a tad unfair. In 1980 Bulova sold more watches than Timex, however, by that time they were owned by Citizen.

The Greatest American Watch Company, Waltham, declared bankruptcy in 1958. In the same year Gruen sold off all of its assets. Elgin, the largest American company by far, declared bankruptcy in 1968. Hamilton bought Buren and moved to Switzerland in 1969. Benrus' story is a bit murky, but by the early 1970's they had been sold. Timex struggled but captured market share. It remained afloat because it owned Polaroid. Longines-Wittnauer wasn't really a company. It was a partnership that allowed both companies to grab part of the American market as something exotic and Swiss. Bulova tried to buy their way out of trouble. They bought Univeral Geneve and Wittnauer. They tried to buy Omega. In the end Citizen gave them an offer that they couldn't refuse.

The biggest American watch brands were either bankrupt or nearly so before the quartz movement was invented or marketed. So, that wasn't it.

This comment is too long already. I wrote some about it here and further back in the WC archives. Tariff policy does come into play. Swiss industrial policy does too. The disruptions and shift in production of World War Two is more responsible. Fun fact: Elgin and Waltham spun out their fuse, gage, and industrial timer divisions that had been formed during the war. They still exist. Also a fact: Bulova, Wittnauer, and Gruen had factories in Switzerland to make movements and movement parts. Those were then shipped to the U.S. and cased here.

There is no monocausal explanation. We don't make a lot of things anymore.

On January 10, 2008, Citizen bought the Bulova Watch Company for $250 million.

It wasn’t owned by Citizen in 1980.

I agree with that. It was both tooling and innovation. They fixed tooling by the Korean War. The Accutron movement (and Hamilton's electric movement) was the answer to innovation, so arguably, they caught up there too. What happened next is harder to understand. Elgin sold more watches in the 1960's than in the 1950's (in two fewer years). Watches were produced and sold, just not profitably.

Labor costs must be factored in. Post-War Europe had dramatically lower labor costs than the United States. Movement production shifted to West Germany and France (and Switzerland). Case production began in earnest in Hong Kong. Many U.S. department stores began to produce private label watches that undercut the big brands (Dorset, Tradition, Andre Bouchard).

I really want to get to the bottom of governmental intervention in the market as well. I can see what the Swiss government did. But the hand of U.S. trade policy is harder to fit into the big picture. In the 1950's and 60's the U.S. sued a lot of American watch companies. Tariffs kept the best movements out (or made them uncompetitive).

A lot of the decline in American manufacturing after WWII has to do with America's foreign policy in regards to the Cold War. Essentially after WWII, America transitions into the Cold War with the Soviets, and this was not something that the US could take on by themselves. The US set up a global system to pretty much bribe itself an alliance in the event it needed to go to war with the Soviet Union, we just did not have the manpower to go it alone. Having a large domestic consumer market, we set up a system in which countries we were allied with would have easy access to sell goods to us, but many of those same countries could be restrictive and set high tariffs that would disadvantage US companies from selling goods to these foreign countries. In my opinion, this led to a massive decrease in manufacturing in the US and transitioned our economy to a service one. We could import what we needed to buy from foreign countries, but you cannot import services. Additionally, we had a large Navy that patrolled the worlds oceans and guaranteed the global shipping lanes were safe and secure so everyone could safely ship their goods around the world. This came at a great cost to the US, as we pretty much provided military security for global shipping to both ally and enemy, and enabled allies to spend drastically less on their own militaries and defense, which in turn enabled allied countries to spend more internally to prop up their own infrastructure and industries. Prior to this American system, if a country wanted to trade, they had to be able to defend their own trade routes, the American system changed this. At least from my study of history, this had a lot to do with the hollowing out of American manufacturing and led to an increase in manufacturing around the world.