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NAPA GOLD FILTERS........... AHHHH NO

Made in Taiwan...I will buy it immediately. Made in China...now only if I have no other choice after some recent purchases.

Anyone else notice the quality of made in China is going down even further. I have made several purchases within the last six months on Amazon that I have had to return because of defects. Two flat pack furniture (i.e. IKEA type) that my wife wanted to try...complete junk. Press board fell apart during assembly on one, parts missing from the other. Amazon doesn't even want any of them back they just gave us the credit. Have to throw out with bulk trash, what a waste. Never again.
 
Are some Chinese companies bad? Yes. Are all Chinese companies bad? No.
 
Whether bad or decent quality, why buy products made by a company from a country that is hostile to us unless you have no choice?
 
"Whether bad or decent quality, why buy products made by a company from a country that is hostile to us unless you have no choice?"

I worked for a US automotive aftermarket company. We were the last one producing our products exclusively in the US. Chinese exporters and US companies importing from China owned the market. Our biggest customers gave us no choice, match the prices of the imported stuff or lose the business. We closed thirteen plants in the US and Canada and opened plants in China and India. Originally we thought we could leave one or two plants producing in the US. We couldn't sell enough US produced product to keep even one plant operating.
While problems like this were happening in many product markets, Washington DC stood by and did nothing while fifty thousand US factories closed and millions of middle class decent paying jobs moved to China, Mexico and India. Meanwhile the US added about 6% import duty to Chinese imports. At the same time China placed import duty starting at 30% on imports from everywhere and on everything. Why did they do that? They did it so their workers would spend the money they earned on Chinese produced goods and create more jobs to drive their economy. So, buy things that aren't produced elsewhere? Easier said than done.
 
Rick62 said:
"Whether bad or decent quality, why buy products made by a company from a country that is hostile to us unless you have no choice?"

I worked for a US automotive aftermarket company. We were the last one producing our products exclusively in the US. Chinese exporters and US companies importing from China owned the market. Our biggest customers gave us no choice, match the prices of the imported stuff or lose the business. We closed thirteen plants in the US and Canada and opened plants in China and India. Originally we thought we could leave one or two plants producing in the US. We couldn't sell enough US produced product to keep even one plant operating.
While problems like this were happening in many product markets, Washington DC stood by and did nothing while fifty thousand US factories closed and millions of middle class decent paying jobs moved to China, Mexico and India. Meanwhile the US added about 6% import duty to Chinese imports. At the same time China placed import duty starting at 30% on imports from everywhere and on everything. Why did they do that? They did it so their workers would spend the money they earned on Chinese produced goods and create more jobs to drive their economy. So, buy things that aren't produced elsewhere? Easier said than done.
Click to expand...
That’s a sad damn story, but it’s the story of our country and its downfall.
 
I just got a case of WIX 51085 filters from Amazon and they are made in the USA. Waiting for a case of 51515.
 
Rick62 said:
"Whether bad or decent quality, why buy products made by a company from a country that is hostile to us unless you have no choice?"

I worked for a US automotive aftermarket company. We were the last one producing our products exclusively in the US. Chinese exporters and US companies importing from China owned the market. Our biggest customers gave us no choice, match the prices of the imported stuff or lose the business. We closed thirteen plants in the US and Canada and opened plants in China and India. Originally we thought we could leave one or two plants producing in the US. We couldn't sell enough US produced product to keep even one plant operating.
While problems like this were happening in many product markets, Washington DC stood by and did nothing while fifty thousand US factories closed and millions of middle class decent paying jobs moved to China, Mexico and India. Meanwhile the US added about 6% import duty to Chinese imports. At the same time China placed import duty starting at 30% on imports from everywhere and on everything. Why did they do that? They did it so their workers would spend the money they earned on Chinese produced goods and create more jobs to drive their economy. So, buy things that aren't produced elsewhere? Easier said than done.
Click to expand...
That is such a tragic and sickening story of govt failure to its own economic drivers at the homeland. Remember a guy named Ross Perot - and the term “A giant sucking sound”? How prophetic was that? For those of us old enough to know and care it’s a terrible prophesy come true to a worse case than we could have ever known. Another sad footnote - Nearly everyone, everywhere still wants to buy “Made in the USA…..
 
GetX'd said:
That is such a tragic and sickening story of govt failure to its own economic drivers at the homeland. Remember a guy named Ross Perot - and the term “A giant sucking sound”? How prophetic was that? For those of us old enough to know and care it’s a terrible prophesy come true to a worse case than we could have ever known. Another sad footnote - Nearly everyone, everywhere still wants to buy “Made in the USA…..
Click to expand...
Everyone wants to buy “made in the USA” but they don’t want to pay for it. Given a lower cost option they will chose it nearly every time.
 
Car #4 said:
Everyone wants to buy “made in the USA” but they don’t want to pay for it. Given a lower cost option they will chose it nearly every time.
Click to expand...
Probably, but the other day I went for a new shovel for my garden and paid twice as much for one made in Canada instead of opting for the Chinese alternative.
 
Car #4 said:
Everyone wants to buy “made in the USA” but they don’t want to pay for it. Given a lower cost option they will chose it nearly every time.
Click to expand...
Fortunately that’s not really true. There are still plenty of people that will pay more for that label “Made in the USA”. A larger issue is there’s not nearly the availability of US made goods as there once was. Too many products are coming from outside and we’ve become a nation of distributors instead of manufacturers. I recently scanned the marketplace for an exterior landscape lighting system. There were plenty of decent looking products/systems to choose from - cheaper too. However I chose one in which the product exuded superior quality in every piece of the system. Solid brass and copper fixtures - Everything with a lifetime warranty - right down to the bulbs sealed w/I the fixtures. Sure I paid more than many of the others would have cost me - but it was all Made in the USA - and worth every penny expended. I and many others would do the same if availability was as it was before that great sucking machine forced us to close thousands of our factories ……. Now it’s too late
 
GetX'd said:
Fortunately that’s not really true. There are still plenty of people that will pay more for that label “Made in the USA”.
Click to expand...
Agreed.
Gotta be careful when making statements such as "EVERYONE wants to..." - because there's very few
things that 100% of the population actually agrees on, other than things such as breathing air...
With me for example, Made In the USA is a critical part of the decision in choosing whatever it is I'm after
and in the case of car parts, for example, I'll buy old (but new in box) stuff simply to obtain the USA made
part.
 
moparedtn said:
Agreed.
Gotta be careful when making statements such as "EVERYONE wants to..." - because there's very few
things that 100% of the population actually agrees on, other than things such as breathing air...
With me for example, Made In the USA is a critical part of the decision in choosing whatever it is I'm after
and in the case of car parts, for example, I'll buy old (but new in box) stuff simply to obtain the USA made
part.
Click to expand...
Us guys that tinker with old cars are not like 90% of the population. I’ll go ahead and say it; we are better than them.
They are the reason we need laws and courts and regulations. It’s to protect our society from their idiocy and lack of discipline. If we let them make important decisions our country will be no better than the third world.

The founding fathers knew what they were doing. Mob rule will descend into chaos.
 
padam said:
Us guys that tinker with old cars are not like 90% of the population. I’ll go ahead and say it; we are better than them.
They are the reason we need laws and courts and regulations. It’s to protect our society from their idiocy and lack of discipline. If we let them make important decisions our country will be no better than the third world.
Click to expand...

Old car hobbyists have to think analytically to keep their rides running, and by that measure alone fall outside the mainstream. I think Mopar guys take it a step further than brand X owners (everyone has one.) We experience the pain of poor quality parts on an up close and personal basis. And if you can afford a hobby car in the first place, you have the means for discretionary spending. The mob at large is thinking one day ahead, and economically speaking, often doesn't have as much choice.
 
A lot of people will drive to a gas station on the other side of town to save a nickel a gallon, so when they buy something, price is paramount, and country of origin and a lot of times quality are way down their list of concerns, if on it at all.
The subject of crappy repro fuel sender units is a recurring topic on all the Mopar forums. In one of the threads over the years, I recall one of the vendors posted that someone had made a good quality sender unit, but it was more expensive than the other source, so they weren't selling well and got discontinued. So we end up with a product that the price is acceptable but they don't work well. Great job consumers!
As Rick62 mentioned in his post, the government really dropped the ball in the late 90s allowing China to dump product here and wreak havoc in North American manufacturing. I worked at the same company he did before his time there, so saw what he saw happening in real time. I remember hearing a product manager say in around 2000, that pallets of brake rotors were showing up at ports packaged and ready to deliver to jobbers, priced at less than we paid just for castings that still needed to be machined and packaged before being shipped out to sell to customers. The company had no choice after a few years but to shut down our factories and move production overseas. Again, those in power sat by and let this happen. Self proclaimed pundits at the time in media and the like seemed to endorse what was happening, claiming we were becoming a "service economy" and somehow letting workers in other countries do the dirty work in hot noisy factories was a good thing while we prospered doing "service" sitting in cubicles or something was a great thing.
 
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