But you didn't say "30 years ago" in your original post, so the implication is current.
If however, you take into consideration 30 years ago, or if indeed 40 years ago to be more precise and compare what you had in terms of brands, the UK had several British brands who sold products well into the 1970's with little than cosmetic changes - radios, televisions, stereo systems - meanwhile the Japanese come in with impeachable quality, better components, better sound quality - and not so expensive cost prices. Could I then say that Asian manufacturing was less energy efficient when at a time the features that British brands didn't sport seemed to glitter and whistle from the Asian end? Thus giving buyers the opportunity to sample products that were better built and better features. Therefore as a buyer I bought Japanese goods with pride because I knew I was buying quality, something a bit modern etc. I never once thought about the energy efficiency or how long it took to get to the UK.
Frankly, I think your reasons for with holding energy info on more or less, "foreign" appliances is rather obtuse - perhaps even if it was to work in America's favour - honestly, the amount of energy a ship uses for transporting cars to the U.S is small meal compared to the amount of fuel it would take for "our" jetliners and your Boeing airplanes to fly long haul - and let's face it, on the basis that America has far more airports on account your country is so much bigger, I stake that other means of travel are wasting huge amounts of energy just to take advantage of it. You can't have it both ways.
As the owner of a Volvo, I'm happy with what I drive - I'm even happier that the model I drive was made before Ford took over Volvo, and now looking at GM where they have shot off SAAB, it remains to be seen whether the "big three" in the U.S can survive, particularly when Chrysler now no longer part of MB, has just tied the knot with Fiat - an Italian company whose reliability in the U.S was patchy, to say the least.
