When people buy American, that means the company is American and sometimes it means the product is made in America, but it doesn't always require the same amount of labor it does in low wage countries because the economics dictate that American factories automate much more. And the technology to automate is improving very quickly, everywhere in the world..

So, because the technology is always more available and continues to get cheaper, over the entire span of their existence all manufacturing, but especially factories in (first) American and Western European and then more recently also Japanese or Taiwanese or Japanese or now even Chinese factories will hum along with a very small number of people compared to the past. Less people required to produce a given widget.. more productivity all the time. Paradoxically, the more productive workers are, the less as many of them are needed, and also there is an effect on consumption as the wealth becomes less spread out in some countries and more spread out in others, but only termporarily, because eventually the same factors will result in automation and decreased need for unskilled or medium skilled human workers, and increasing demand for a much smaller number of the most highly skilled ones, there, too.

Lots of companies remain in the US and produce in the US, but a lot less than in the past, before the various free trade agreements that give US companies access to profitable emerging markets, realy where the big money is therse days.

Also, long before GATT which became the WTO, NAFTA, etc, made it possible to trade access to the US market for access to foreign markets and untaxed offshore profits, many US corporations to varying degrees had already seemed to gradually make conscious choices to slow investments i US factories or eventually, to abandon the manufacture of many kinds of consumer goods to Asian companies and instead, focus on what they saw as high value fields like semiconductors and military/industrial electronics, high end materials and technologes.. where there was patent protection, high margins, less competition and a lot of government spending, but employees also needed security clearances and that excluded a great many people who for various reasons didn't want to pursue that path or couldnt get one if they did.

I think that was a mistake because that meant that many US companies were in a sense wedded to the Cold War kinds of budgets and programs and when the USSR disintegrated the huge US military-inndustrial complex, which had become great at making incredibly high tech products, was left literally stuck in outer space without a paddle and they had to figure out how to continue that level of spending, despite a growing need to end it. of course, in a sense, 9-11 was a Godsend for them, because it postponed the cuts that everyone thought were inevitable.

So, now we have a problem in that decades of cuts in education and healthcare are making it hard for us to remain he leader economically or increasingly, even remain relevant.

A lot of the kinds of jobs that supported our large middle class in the middle and latter part of the 20th century vanished and nothing has ever stepped in to fill the gap. If we dont stop scapegoating everything and everybody except ourselves, we're in serious trouble.
So by all means, buy American, but don't assume that you are always necessarily creating jobs HERE by doing it. The laws on labelling products have a lot of loopholes, for example, I think products 90% "made" in other NAFTA or WTO countries can often be sold labelled as made in the USA, with the way things are made, I think the pieces that make up our products come from everywhere.. its extremely rare that any kind of complex product is just made in one country, perhaps except for China, which is so big and diverse economically that it happens as often as not. (It used to be the USA doing that.)

Also, keep in mind that products come from all over the world because of BILATERAL trade agreements.. so it may even be illegal for an American company to "discriminate against" another NAFTA or WTO country's firms in sourcing a good or service.

Recently it emerged that a lot of bailout/stimulus money that apparently many thought would go to "American" firms for things like innovative "green" jobs ended up going overseas, oftentimes to buy "green" products from sometimes long established companies - creating jobs - THERE. I wasn't surprised. When those grants were announced, my first thought was that it might even be illegal now for our own government to discrminate against foreign firms because for decades the US has screamed holy murder when foreign countries discriminated against US firms in their dealings, when US companies want to open factories or sell their products THERE, we may have to open up a US market to them in exchange, allowing them to provide a service here, in exchange. Even educational, financial/insurance, medical and legal services will soon be irrevocably opened to foreign firms, giving a right to the companies that invest in developing US markets like health insurance and private education to remain here, an entitlement. US jobs hold a lot of appeal to skilled workers in other countries, and many doctors, nurses, teachers and attorneys, even, may jump at the chance even if they have to live in dormitories, make low wages, and return back home in five years, never having seen much of the US except for the inside of a classroom or hospital.

In exchange, an American multinational might get the green light to invest in a factory there, or sell them our American-branded products. As long as they keep their profits overseas and invest them there, its tax free money.

We (the American voters) are very unsophisticated and we are often struggling under mental models of the world and our place in it that are more appropriate to the 1980s than the 2010s.