Re: Steel isn't just steel...
What's the difference in quality? Well, steel is steel, aluminum is aluminum, and ABS laminated plywood is pretty much ABS laminated plywood. Sure, the assembly quality may suffer a bit on the imported cases, but enough to justify building my own? I really don't think so.
Given that materials design and forming is my formal education, its fair to say that this collection of statements isn't true. Whether it be the nominal alloy grade, the qc of the batches of said grade, the choice of forming/assembly method, the modeling and/or testing of the product, or the outbound qc.
Metal alloys can have tremendous variance in local concentrations of the added elements that provide the desired metal properties. Each forming method of the alloy, in turn, has different effects on strength, fracture toughness, corrosion, etc. Then the method of plating or galvanizing, etc.
Such things matter little for some common consumer goods, but beyond the least stringent level of engineering they do play a role. Even the consumer goods manufacturers care extensively about things like plastic mold wear, modeling of resin flow in molds, etc.
Note that this has nothing to do with where goods are manufactured, but rather is about the engineering care and/or know-how applied to the item.
The engineering differentiation possible between, say, different toasters at a price consumers are willing to pay seldom warrants the additional R&D overhead for very little performance gain. This is not the case for something like a gas power turbine, pressure vessel, mining truck, or MRI machine.
If, in the case of the toaster, there is little engineering differentiation possible, then generally it is more like that quality of manufacture is not as critical. This opens up the possibility of assembly using less automation, lower skilled workers, etc. This might also enable using more affordable labor outside the first and second world nations.
I am afraid one common logical fallacy is that better paid workers, be it in the US, EU, Brazil, Israel, UAE, Russia, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Korea, etc. means better quality. Certainly all of us in professional audio have worked with incompetent electricians that earn a good wage, and low-earning stage hands that work much better/harder than the evening's FOH mixer. For the skilled trades, education, practice, networking, and general intelligence are better metrics of success than absolute wage.
Ultimately engineering, design, capital availability, and manufacturing prowess are the tools of differentiation that create enough price elasticity in sufficiently "advanced" products to enable those workers with the correct "soft skills" to earn better wages, in any country context. A country like the US, Japan, Korea, Sweden, France, England, Israel, etc. must inevitably be pressed towards the creation of items whose complexity and subtlety of manufacturing provide meaningful room for competitive improvements and advancements. This is the general reason why "advanced" manufacturing can, and does, still thrive in these countries.
Even a company with a product as mundane as what Penn-Elcom produces still has a reputation for quality and durability within the industries that matter to their business. As long as they retain that competitive differentiation, they will have the price elasticity to make manufacture of their product sustainable in a high wage country.
