re: ARE TOOLS MADE OVERSEAS OF POOR QUALITY AND IF SO WHO'S TO BLAME

I think that most businesses follow the money; cheaper production allows them to lower tool costs, which helps sales and boost profits. In some ways, this has been going on since the beginning of the industrial revolution; machines taking the place of human labour in order to both increase production and decrease costs.
North America had a huge head start in the manufacturing industry compared to eg. China; as well, restrictive foreign government polices and domestic trade restrictions kept the bulk of North American tool manufacturing in North America. As the manufacturing capabilities of other countries has improved and trade restrictions have lessened, businesses have moved to cheaper manufacturing, as has been the pattern for the last 250 years.

I think that the quality problem in many of today’s tools is not simply because they are made overseas; the technology to build tools is not particularly complicated, especially considering that China also builds microchips and eg. satellites. I think that the main issues are that companies are continually looking for ways of reducing production costs, and consumer demand for entry level tools is much much higher than it was eg. 50 years ago. If a company can get away with putting plastic gears in a drill and making it cheap enough so many people buy it, then even if it breaks in 2 years instead of 20, the public will slowly have its perception changed on how long a tool is “supposed” to last. Especially if producing a tool with plastic gears allows Joe Weekend Woodworker to go down to his local big box store and be able to afford it today, rather than having to save for it. One of the last companies to sell North American made woodworking machinery, General, stopped its N. American production a couple of years ago, I think largely because they were having trouble selling the N. American made tools. For example, you could buy a 6" jointer made at their plant in Quebec for ~$4000, or buy a very similar one made by them at their plant in Taiwan for ~$800; which one do you think they sold more of….Another example is Northfield Machinery http://www.northfieldwoodworking.com/
Excellent, N. American made tools but prices that are unaffordable to 99% of hobbyists and small woodworking businesses.

I don’t think that we’ll ever see N. American made tools offered at a price point that most of us can afford, and therefore we probably won’t see too many tools brought back to be made in N. America again. I think that the best we can do is to spend our money on tools that are well made, not simply the cheapest at the BORG, and call out the manufactures that make crap tools or offer crap service. In this fast paced internet based world one bad review carries a lot more weight than ever before.