There are two kinds of people; those who like dichotomies, and those who don’t.

“U.S. is quality, China is junk” is way beyond oversimplification. Some of the best and most advance factories in the world are in China. Probably not the worst. iPhones are made in China. Plenty of poor quality cheap stuff from there. Plenty of poor quality expensive stuff made in the U.S.

Japan once had a reputation for poor quality, even though they also produced some very good stuff. Government and industry there formed a consensus that all would benefit if they changed that, and they did it. Who knows if China will do the same. There will always be demand for dirt cheap stuff that will work well enough for a little while. Kind like illicit drugs; not a problem if no one buys them.

 

In the 50's "made out of occupation forces beer cans" was the term used regarding Japanese products.

 

LOL, never heard that one.

 

Maybe I heard it more since my dad was occupation forces.

 

Budweiser beer cans & '78 Fords.
Then the Japanese learned specialty steels and close tolerance bearing manufacturing.
I'll take a Japanese production, and secondly Taiwanese over many of the other oriental country's output on many, many products manufactured.
I got a serious respect for Japanese by being in motorcycle repair trade for close to 20 years.

 

Right on! Totally agree. The US used to fund the Federal government with only Tariffs (before Income Tax) and we saw an increasing living standard.

 

Please step back on the HHR site and away from politics, thank you.

 

I stopped buying MOOG a long time ago; its quality has truly dropped below acceptable levels.
And after a couple of trial purchases, I stopped buying components labeled "Made in Taiwan"; their quality never came close to acceptable standards.
And yes, I buy Chinese products, although I'd prefer Japanese or European ones—the kind I loved not long ago.

 

That's a real shame. I guess I got lucky with my LCA's on the 2010 LT.

Did some research on Moog, they are currently owned by Tenneco, which is a part of "Apollo Global Management" which is a publicly traded company (NYSE: APO) which is primarily owned by institutional investors,that hold over 60% of its shares. Key institutional holders include Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and Capital World Investors.

Any time "investors" have primary control, it's bad news for any company. All they care about is making more profit which means cutting corners every where that it's possible to do so.

Sadly, the same is true for AC Delco - with 85% of GM stock being held by institutional investors - Vanguard Group Inc. is the largest shareholder, holding over 100 million shares, followed by BlackRock, Inc. and State Street.

 

I say it again: Moog stuffs lowest bidder stuff into boxes with moog printed on them. Just like most auto parts vendors. They don't care what country the parts come from.
Just take a look at their catalog. The old catalogs furnished specs of the products so you could make interchanges on the fly, now they don't have the data to do that because it belongs to somebody else.