Trump hosts Made in America party, serves America's last flatware maker with Chinese spoons

Made in America event White House.
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Matt Roberts is president of Sherrill Manufacturing, the last flatware maker in the United States. On Monday, he was among the honorees at the Trump administration's 2018 "Made in America Product Showcase," a party at the White House celebrating U.S. manufacturers — and he was served with flatware made in China.

While Roberts manned a table showing off his company's work, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) brought over a spoon from the refreshment table. "It says Oneida Ltd.," he said, disappointed. "It's made in China."

Worse, Oneida is an American company that used to manufacture its products here in the States but moved production overseas. And Sherill products are made in a former Oneida factory building.

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President Trump promised Tenney in November that he would buy Sherill flatware for White House use, but evidently the purchase has yet to be made. Maybe he just needs a little prodding — perhaps with an American-made fork.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.