Two origin ID apps, NonUSA and Made O'Meter, are seeing downloads surge as Europeans boycott US-made goods.

With the United States having started an incredibly dumb and destructive trade war with Canada, Mexico, and most likely soon the European Union, there’s quite a few people who want to avoid American products. With how interconnected the global production chain and corporate ownership structures are, it’s often difficult to determine where products actually come from. Luckily, technology can help. There’s online directories like Buy European Made, which lists European companies in all kinds of markets, or European Alternatives, which focuses on listing European alternatives to online services. As nice as these are, they are quite manual, and require people to actively search around, which is kind of a hassle when you’re making a quick grocery store run. What if we could use image recognition to just take a photo of a product’s box, and have our phone tell us where a product’s made? That’s exactly what Made O’Meter does: take a photo of a product, wait for a few seconds, and it’ll tell you exactly where it’s made. It’s made in Denmark, with the goal to “support Europe, Canada & friends”. I’ve been trying it out on various products around the house, from groceries like cereals and cookies, to tech products and clothing we just bought that still had the tags on them. Every result turned out to be 100% accurate, and it takes only a few seconds to analyse each photo. It also doesn’t seem to be too fussy with the quality of the photos themselves – it doesn’t care about hands and fingers in the frame, or weirdly-shaped boxes that don’t fit nicely in a view finder. It’s a website, not an app – very platform-agnostic, which is great – and I was using it in Firefox for Android without issue. If you want to avoid American products, Made O’Meter is a great tool to have with you the next time you order something or run to the store.