Thanks Delta Airlines, whose metal nametags are literally just cut sheets of aluminum with some paint on them and are still Made in China. Someone seriously wants to tell me we can manufacture bleeding edge tech when we can't even cut and paint our own fucking sheet metal?
There's plenty of places to get metal nametags made in the U.S.A. But Delta chose to go the cheapest route to save a few pennies.
As far as I know most of the machinery is made in Europe, mostly Germany, again generally higher cost than the US. So I find it difficult to believe that it can't be done in the US.
Cost cutting seems to be done much more deeply in the US than in Europe. For example, economy class on all North American airlines is rather miserable, while most European non budget carriers have a better experience in economy.
In a lot of ways, this is obviously good, most people benefit from lower prices, more value being created, etc, but I think it's also made it so that cheap-but-ethically-dubious manufacturing from other countries becomes increasingly appealing, especially since it's abstracted enough from the end-user to where they can comfortably say "out of site out of mind".
I'm no better; I know very well the conditions of some other countries, and think they're very bad. I also think it's bad that America fought a whole war to end slavery, and instead we just launder it through other countries. Still, despite me thinking all of this, I still generally shop for reasonable prices instead of trying to focus on ethical stuff.
When we can't make our own fucking blue jeans we absolutely cannot try for a technology victory.