Lately, I have been feeling uneasy about St. Patrick’s Day. When I was a kid, I was so proud of being Irish. I would tell perfect strangers that my family came from Ireland. On St. Patrick’s Day, I brought my dad’s old shelalee to school for “show and tell”. For those who lack Irishness, a shelalee is a knobby walking stick made from Irish blackthorn with a heavy brass knob on the end. It’s a murderous-looking thing, too short to provide any support for walking unless you are, as I was, three feet tall. I fraudulently convinced a sixth-grader I could speak fluent Gallic and even gave him a demonstration, much to his amazement.

But more recently, I’ve been keeping my Irish to myself because my sister sent away for DNA ancestry testing and now we know the truth. Far from being all Irish or even mostly Irish, it turns out we are mostly Scottish and English and Czech. And some Irish. (Now I cringe at all those times I laughed at “bohemie” jokes.)

The DNA test, in our case, “23 and Me” is pretty easy. For about $100, you get a small box in the mail containing a plastic vial. You spit in it and send it back. Six weeks later, a web site will tell you where your ancestors migrated from. (DNA testing is different from, for example, “past life regression” that was popular a few years ago in which curious but gullible participants would be told they were once Genghis Kahn or Cleopatra.)

I still don’t know how I feel about being a walking example of globalism. Of course, that’s normal in the US. We all came from someplace else (in fact, many places)—except for the one percent or so who are indigenous. Americans are like automobiles, made up of parts from all over the world. I once bought a Chevy Silverado, thinking it was an American truck. But it turns out it’s made of only about 50 percent American parts. According to the American Made Index, the most “American” car is the Tesla Model Y, followed by the Honda Passport and the VW ID.4. The next most American car with an American name is the Jeep Gladiator, coming in at only number 7 on the list. Ford has manufacturing facilities in Canada and Mexico, Spain, Germany and Thailand. The Ford Ranger is made in Argentina.

Automobile glass can come from Saint-Gobain (France), tires come from Falken (China) or Pirelli (Italy), electronics come from Samsung (South Korea) or Panasonic (Japan), engine components come from Bosch (Germany) or Magna International (Canada). It’s impossible to calculate the percentage of foreign parts because companies often use “just-in-time” parts as they are needed at the time. Like making potato soup from whatever is in the refrigerator.

The bottom line is that now, with the new trade war, every car part is subject to a tariff and, according to experts, every new automobile will cost an average of $3,000 more. We might as well face it—there is no such thing as an “American car”. And I’m not really Irish.