Cheap Import Bearings

nineoaks2004 wrote:
Most foreign made items are inferior to those made in the U.S., however most things are not made here anymore, and that is a shame, I will gladly pay more for a properly made item (meaning U.S. made)

Well drat. And here I thought BMW (Germany, US) made pretty good cars. Honda and Toyota (Japan, US, Canada, Europe) too. I don't have one, but wouldn't expect serious quality issues with the Volvo S60 (China) either. I don't like their closed ecosystem, but I've always thought Apple's hardware (China) is top notch. Dell and HP hardware (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand) isn't perhaps quite as nice as Apple's, but I always thought it was mostly decent. My new cell phone (Korea) seems to be quite well made also. No complaints about my new SSD (Singapore) either.

Guess I was wrong about all of that.

I can, and do when I can find them, pay more for US made goods, but other countries really can make good products too. It's up to the company sourcing the product from an outsourced factory to provide good specifications for a quality product and then make sure the factory manufacturers it according to those specifications. That requires inspections, quality control checks on finished goods, etc... Usually companies outsource to save money and want to skip that step because it costs money - the factory figures that out, and cuts corners. It's not the country, it's what's in the interests of the company. An outsourced manufacturer is not working in the best interests of the sourcing company. They're working in their own best interest and will do whatever they can to improve their bottom line. (The same is often true for outsourced services, as well as government contracting.)