> This seems to suggest the populace is at fault, wanting and buying cheap gadgets no matter what the consequences are?

I didn't read GP's "others" as "populace". One reading would have the U.S. and other [governments] have given in to excessive demands of China.

Now the "devil" in the question doesn't necessarily have to be China. It could be Global Finance -- an abstraction which believe it or not is reasonably reducible to actual people and families, the fabled "1%" [sic].