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Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

> Why is this not a major talking point?

because we live in a globalised world. your phone would cost 10x what it costs now if you moved production to the US. that would mean lots of people without phones, so a much smaller economy. no one wants that.

> Americans have been polled

ah, polls :)

> across the aisle people prefer made in the USA

as a European, i have always associated American made with low quality, cheaply made, bad taste and expensive. American products are to be avoided at all times. this has been the case for decades and decades, before the move to China. at least now even American companies realised this and moved production to far superior Chinese manufacturers.

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>at least now even American companies realised this and moved production to far superior Chinese manufacturers.

This sounds like it needs a /s.

For one thing, the transfer of American manufacturing to China happened a long time ago for many common items. The quality of the items that we received here in the US from these Chinese producers has never reached the previous level for some products.

I have bought and used products from all over the world too. Steel and iron tools from China and India frequently are not tempered correctly so they fail, sometimes on the first use. I learned a long time ago that the best tools for serious, everyday usage and longevity - those things you buy once and use forever - are old American-made tools. Once the brands sold out and moved production to China, quality dropped significantly and has not recovered.

What you may be seeing is the case where China ships its highest quality tools, parts, etc to your country, whatever that is, because after doing market research to understand how to accomplish market penetration, they found that people in your country would not compromise on quality/price/whatever and so they know that their cheap-ass junk and production seconds need to go to a less-sensitive market like the US, where items with the same functionality can be found at widely variable prices and no matter the price - there will be a buyer. That condition may not exist in your country.

The operative phrase in any company's financials is "for the (your country name here) market" which indicates that someone at that company had the responsibility of researching buyer habits and expectations in that country so that any product launches would be more likely to succeed.

> as a European, i have always associated American made with low quality, cheaply made, bad taste and expensive. American products are to be avoided at all times.

What informs that viewpoint? It’s really foreign to any perception I’ve ever heard from anyone or experienced myself.

weird. i don’t know anyone who has had a good experience, or who prefers american made products. cars, food, fashion etc. they represent bad taste and poor quality. i thought this was known globally. like how germans are technical. one of those things that are part truth, part myth.

where i come from if someone wants great quality we buy european, japanese or chinese products.

whenever i travel to different continents for work, no one i talk to wants or buys american made anything. it’s again, european, japanese or chinese.

of course software is different, due to its globalised nature.

and of course sometimes you buy american branded products. if you can’t find anything else, you kind of have to settle with the american product.

I have had exposure to industrial equipment sales in Asia, Latin America and the Mideast. American-made equipment generally has an excellent reputation. Cost, however, is often an issue.

It would be helpful if you were more specific. Where do you come from? What types of products are you talking about?

I share same sentiment on consumer goods, especially cars.

Your experience with industrial equipment is irrelevant here since it's still being done in US.

This sounds totally foreign to me. In the industrial world, American equipment is pretty good quality. Japanese also. And German, Italian, and French.

Chinese is cheap but their machinery is generally not very good. They screw up all sorts of stuff: wrong bearings, designs are copied but not always thoroughly thought out, weld issues, poorly programmed PLCs, incorrect wiring, poor metals quality control, dangerous safety implementations, the list goes on and on. Some bigger manufacturers are getting better there.

But places like Turkey and Korea have a nice balance of technically "good enough" and cheaper than the Euro/American products, though Korean machines have gotten more expensive and are technically very sophisticated.

The idea that anyone building a factory would turn to China for technically sophisticated machinery is interesting and would be a quick way to get fired in industry. China has gotten a lot better over the years, but I think a lot of people forget that a lot of what happens in China is assembly, not necessarily manufacturing of the subcomponents, which is where much of the actual value add is. If you do get machinery made in China, you look for those who use as much European, Japanese, Korean, or American parts as possible.

> of course software is different, due to its globalised nature

Sure, not American, all the American software companies. They are global, unlike every other giant enterprise.

> one of those things that are part truth, part myth

Yeah perhaps true. But then I’d say that it’s essentially a meaningless conclusion to hold as some universal truth.

Be careful of European Exceptionalism that reverberates same uninformed thinking American Exceptionalism was known for. Usually, full of prejudice, glib pride and delirious nationalism.

i am very careful. i prefer any other nations products. japan, china, almost any country in europe, lots in south america. but the US has constantly disappointed. and not only recently, but throughout the decades.

Can you name Chinese products (made in China by and for Chinese companies -- not American or European companies) that you consider to be of high quality? Same for South America.

And what American products have "constantly" disappointed you?

This. There are different levels of Chinese manufacturing. One made for top Europe and American brands that are good quality while others is the utter junk that floods the Asia Pacific.

Indeed. I live in Asia and one of the first things I learned when I moved is that Some American Brand's clothing in Asia is frequently not of the same quality as Some American Brand's clothing in the US, even when it's actually more expensive.

Yujiintl's LEDs. They are not cheap (~1$/W for 97 CRI (typ) strip-suitable SMD LEDs on tape), but their color accuracy, especially with the 50-100% more-expensive triple-phosphor VTC series, is hard to match, especially for what are still "affordable" prices.

Huawei and Xiaomi comes to mind. Build is not Apple quality, but technically superior (I say that as I own pretty much every Apple product)

It's so superior that even their CFO prefers to use Apple instead.

I expect this is highly product and Industry specific. In healthcare, medical devices and drugs, the US, and Japan are the gold standard. Most companies won't even Source raw plastic materials or chemical precursors from China and India due to Quality Control issues.

I would pay 10x more for something made in America, because right now the defacto price is infinity.

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