For US products, it depends on where it's made and what it is. Most American-branded stuff is made elsewhere (China usually), so that's not really "American". For stuff actually made in the USA, a lot of times it is high quality; if the company were going for lowest cost, they wouldn't make it in the US to begin with. However, this isn't so true of cars still. American cars have gotten better, but they're still not as good as Japanese cars for the most part (Ford is probably the best of the bunch though, Chrysler is probably the worst). But then you have to consider what they're competing against: Japanese and European cars, which are both places with high labor rates and excellent engineering. If your choice was between an American car from GM or Ford, or a Chinese car from Cherry or an Indian car from Tata, obviously the American car is the best choice. So it's all relative.

As for "Japanese" stuff, that's true: there's a bunch of Japanese-branded stuff that's made in China, and it's definitely not of the quality of Japanese-made stuff of yesteryear.

> As for "Japanese" stuff, that's true: there's a bunch of Japanese-branded stuff that's made in China, and it's definitely not of the quality of Japanese-made stuff of yesteryear.

There are also problems with literal counterfeit Japanese products. One example I'm familiar with is Hakko soldering stations; it's apparently not to hard to find Chinese kock-offs who duplicated the case, packaging, and branding but otherwise use a substandard design with substandard components.

Interestingly, I just got a Hakko FX-888D last year, so I did a little googling to see what you were talking about, and sure enough, there's apparently a bunch of fakes being sold.

However, the people who posted about fakes all seemed to be saying the same thing: they bought it (usually on Ebay) from a seller in China.

Well, what do you expect?

Yes, if you buy something name-brand from a seller in China, who sends it directly to you from China, you can expect it to be a counterfeit.