You’re regurgitating pro-corporate, pro-offshoring talking-points as if they justify lying-to and manipulating consumers. That’s not just saying “yes, and…”

You quoted someone-else’s yes-and, and picked a particularly-shitty someone to quote. You could have just taken the L, but wasted 5 paragraphs to wrap-up with “but oh btw, this is all meaningless”.

I prefer to buy local yes, but I’ll take Canadian, Mexican, or anything made in South America as close-enough to “Made in America”. As it is, there’s a great many (quality, price irrelavent)products that won’t reach me from those places, couldn’t tell you if quality versions are even still made in the Americas today, what with logic like yours deciding the supply-chain behind closed-doors, but I can get them from any number of SE Asian countries by way of my local Big-box.

If I’m going that route, I prefer to cut-out the middle-man -I’m no stranger to alibaba/ali-express, and all sorts of niche sellers around the globe, except:

As you say, I often don’t have the budget for quality, origin be damned. End-up having to modify or retrofit things I buy instead. If I’m lucky, they last long enough for me to obtain better versions, probably used. Local second-hand does just fine when Local-made is unobtainium, and has the virtue of not enriching the big-box stores that try to put everything smaller out of business.