things you can't buy in the USA (and why)

In our globalized economy, the default assumption is that you should be able to buy any good, in any part of the developed world, for a roughly similar price. And while this is generally true, I’m always surprised when traveling to learn exactly where this rule breaks down. It’s not just Cuban cigars - there are many things which cannot be bought in the USA.

I thought I would make a list of things I’ve consumed or seen in other countries that you generally cannot buy in the USA—at least not easily, or anywhere near the price it costs in some other part of the world. Sometimes the good is literally banned; more often, some invisible institutional barrier makes it five times the price or a pale imitation of the real thing. [This list excludes things that are straightforwardly illegal, like certain drugs, as well as services that only exist because of extremely cheap labour, like having a local tailor make all your clothing from scratch for pennies. This is strictly about physical goods.]

I find this interesting for two reasons: 1) It’s fun to discover new things that, if you live in the US, you might not even realize exist. 2) It reveals the hidden structural and institutional reasons why certain things fail to cross borders.

1. Hyper-regional foods
You can eat a phenomenal steak for basically nothing in Argentina, or eat far higher-quality fruit in Spain or vegetables in India for a fraction of what you pay in the USA. Some of this comes down to the laws of physics and logistics: you either cannot ship the good fast and far enough to eat it while ripe, or the cost of the refrigerated supply chain is too expensive to ship far from where it grows.

But there are other structural barriers to food globalization:

• Protectionism: Countries like South Korea restrict the export of their Hanwoo cattle, with the beef almost entirely reserved for domestic consumption. Japan similarly banned the export of wagyu cows and sperm, and true Kobe beef is exported only in tiny quantities. Argentina works the other way around: its steak is so cheap domestically partly because the government has historically taxed and restricted beef exports to keep prices low.

• Health: Some cheeses which use raw milk cannot be legally imported to the USA because FDA laws ban the sale of raw-milk cheese aged for less than 60 days.

• Ethical Bans: Haggis, Scotland’s national dish, has been banned in the USA since 1971 because the USDA prohibits sheep lung in food. Many other delicacies like whale and shark are similarly banned.

• Danger (and pest control): There are fruits like India’s Alphonso mango, Blackcurrant and Jamaica’s ackee which, despite being beloved elsewhere, are largely unavailable in the USA. Fresh ackee is banned by the FDA because the fruit contains a dangerous toxin if improperly ripened. Indian mangoes are subjected to strict USDA irradiation or hot-water treatments to kill pests, which degrades the quality of the fruit.

• Economies of scale: Exotic foods common elsewhere, like camel’s milk, simply lack the baseline domestic demand to sustain a profitable import market in the US.

• Customs: Cuts of beef differ from one culture to the next. If a specific foreign cut doesn’t map onto standard American processing, it’s rarely imported because consumers don’t recognize it.

• Un-commodifiable goods: Then there are goods which cannot be industrialized like cloudberries (no ability to farm them at scale) or khat (it goes bad in a matter of hours after being picked).

2. Proper Finnish saunas
You generally cannot buy a true Finnish sauna in the USA, atleast anywhere close in price to what it costs in Europe. You can absolutely buy things labeled saunas—barrel saunas, infrared cabins—but not an actual Finnish sauna. Finland has a robust, localized supply chain: building codes designed for saunas, specialized tradespeople, and cheap domestic components. It is typically cheaper to fly to Finland to buy a sauna heater and put it in your checked luggage than to buy the same heater in the USA. But the biggest barrier is tacit knowledge. Proper Finnish saunas require a deep understanding of specific design principles in order to provide the proper Finnish sauna experience—a form of cultural, architectural expertise that sauna kits and contractors in the USA don’t possess.

3. Exterior roller shutters (Rollladen)
In much of Europe, homes feature heavy shutters integrated into the exterior of the window, enabling total blackout and better insulation. Sleeping in true, complete darkness—not “blackout curtain” darkness, but can’t-see-your-hand darkness—is an experience most Americans will never have. These shutters are nearly impossible to get in the USA because these shutters are built directly into the home during its construction. They are fundamentally incompatible with standard American wood-frame, siding, and drywall construction, meaning there is no domestic supply chain to support them, even if you built a house to fit them.

4. Tilt-and-turn windows
Related: most apartments in Germany (and much of Europe) have windows that do two things—tilt inward from the top for ventilation, or swing fully open like a door for airflow and easy cleaning. They also seal dramatically better than typical American windows. You cannot easily buy these windows in the USA because the entire domestic supply chain—manufacturing, replacement parts, and rough-opening framing conventions—is built around the double-hung sliding window. Because US builders aren’t set up for them, there is no market for them.

5. High-performance kitchen appliances (kettles and rice cookers)
In the UK and much of Europe, an electric kettle boils water roughly twice as fast as an American one. European outlets output 220-240 volts, allowing kettles to pull up to 3,000 watts. Standard US outlets max out at 120 volts, capping American kettles at around 1,500 watts.

This same electrical barrier is why you cannot buy the top of the line Japanese rice cookers in the US. Japan operates on a unique 100-volt grid. If you plug a highly precise 100V Japanese rice cooker into a 120V American outlet, the extra voltage ruins the delicate temperature settings and algorithms, making the best rice cookers unavailable in the US.

6. Fancy toilets
In Japan, nearly every home and public restroom features high-tech toilets with integrated bidets, seat warmers, and dryers. While you can buy cheap aftermarket attachments in the US, fully integrated models remain a niche luxury that is prohibitively expensive to install. Japanese bathrooms are built with grounded electrical outlets positioned right next to the toilet. Because most American bathrooms lack default wiring next to the toilet, installing a washlet is not just buying the washlet, but also hiring an electrician to open the drywall.

7. Micro electric vehicles
In Europe and Japan, micro-EVs (like Japanese Kei cars or the Citroën Ami) are incredibly popular, cheap, and efficient for city driving. You cannot buy them in the US due to vehicle safety standards. The US requires strict crash-testing, heavy structural roll-cages, and airbags for anything classified as a car, which has made these models of vehicles unavailable.

8. Better sunscreen
People who care about skincare greatly prefer sunscreens made in Europe and Asia over those available in the USA. Foreign sunscreens are less greasy, don’t leave a white cast, and provide superior UVA protection. They are unavailable in the USA because the FDA classifies sunscreen as an over-the-counter drug, whereas other countries regulate it as a cosmetic. The FDA approval process is so slow that new sunscreens cannot get approved.

9. Balcony solar
In Germany, it’s very common for apartment dwellers to put solar panels on their balcony and plug them directly into a standard wall socket to generate electricity for their home. Doing so feeds power into the household power supply, which required Germany to pass specific regulations standardizing plug-in inverters and relaxing grid-metering rules. Without these specialized safety standards and grid rules, the US electrical code effectively bans plugging solar panels directly into a regular wall outlet.

10. Grass roofs
Sod (grass) roofs are everywhere you look in the Faroe Islands and are common in Norway, providing excellent insulation and looking incredibly charming. You cannot put one on an American home. Wet soil is incredibly heavy, requiring specialized load-bearing engineering that American wood-frame residential construction isn’t designed to support.

Government regulation and shipping are the two explanations you’d expect to be behind most of these — and they are. But in writing this list, what surprised me is how much housing-related factors also stop the spread of good home goods. What stands out is that when construction in your home community follows one particular custom, it becomes very hard to buy goods that only work if other people also want to buy them — because the same community norms that stop you from getting it are the same norms stopping everyone else from getting it too. Given this stickiness, it’s hard to imagine a future where eg exterior roller shutters, despite their superiority, ever make it to the USA.

The other thing that stood out is how some things are available all over the world in name, but not in essence. I was surprised to learn that the saunas commonly found in American homes aren’t the same thing as a Finnish sauna, and how hard it is to actually build one in the USA. I suspect most sauna owners don’t even realize this. This aligns with an existing view I have that many foods sold in the USA, despite having the same name as the food sold elsewhere, taste very different — but because the name is the same, people don’t realize this unless they’ve actually tried eg hummus in Israel or a tomato in Spain. While it’s more obvious that the $22 hamburger slider labelled Wagyu is in fact not actually Wagyu, it’s harder to understand the difference without tasting for yourself how some fruits and vegetables are planted to be eaten within a matter of days of being picked, vs being planted to be shipped around the world and consumed months later.

So that’s my list of things I’ve seen elsewhere that you generally can’t buy in the USA. I’m sure there are many others, so let me know anything else you’ve come across that you can’t find here.