Safety IS first. If it's not safe it won't fly no matter how cheap it is. This is clearly a case where engineers were proposing an inferior solution that allowed a lower price point. They mislead the whole company and let their colleagues down.
It doesn’t matter how safe something is if no one is going to buy it.
Safe means "not a death trap."
That level of safety is a hard prerequisite for a viable product. There is no ambiguity about this.