On a related note: as a non-American who is therefore missing out on the patriotism, the label "made in the USA" doesn't inspire any confidence in me -- at least for clothing and apparel.
My most recent example of this would be a not-cheap messenger bag that had problems both in terms of quality of the materials used (e.g. cheap zippers) as well as the manufacturing quality (e.g. the zippers weren't sewn on properly and would frequently jam) -- even the design had problems (e.g. a magnet covered by fabric in a place where it would be exposed to so much friction during everyday use the fabric wore out within one month or so).
I'm from the US, and I don't have any confidence in the quality of products made in the USA. It was always a running joke with my dad that something must have been made in the USA if it failed catastrophically or in dangerous ways almost immediately after purchase (because my family had a run of buying hilariously bad/dangerous products that happened to be made in the USA).
I avoided American made cars, and chose Japanese manufactured cars, for most of my life because of my personal bias and mistrust of American car quality. I've recently, in the past few years, begun to accept that Ford makes a decent vehicle (and have owned a motorhome built on a Ford chassis, and now own a big Ford diesel pickup truck, and have been quite satisfied with both). But, even now, I don't think I would give a "home team" advantage to American products. I definitely don't assume they're higher quality on that basis. I still prefer American products if I'm choosing between Chinese and American made, but mostly because I have a reasonable expectation that the American made product had some human rights protections for the workers making the product. There are well-made American products, but it's rarely a mass-produced consumer good.
That's true. The last car I bought new was a Nissan 350Z; part of the appeal was that it is one of the few remaining Nissan automobiles sold in the US that are wholly assembled in Japan, and imported to the US. I opted not to buy another Toyota after not really loving the Celica I owned for a few years, nor being impressed by my dad's Camry; most Toyotas are built in the US.
Both of the Ford vehicles I've owned were manufactured in Kentucky. I believe all of the Ford trucks are US-made, but certainly the big ones are. Though I wouldn't really have a problem buying made-in-Mexico products; the working conditions aren't ideal in Mexico, but they aren't comparable to China, in terms of human rights violations.
After I moved from the US to Japan for a few years before spending a couple months backpacking around China, I concluded that Japan has the highest-quality consumer goods, China had the cheapest goods, and America had the best-value goods.
This article is pretty bad, of course. It has no real quantitative measures, just a couple of auto industry quality scandals. That sort of thing happens everywhere, but Takata and VW are just in the news right now.
My most recent example of this would be a not-cheap messenger bag that had problems both in terms of quality of the materials used (e.g. cheap zippers) as well as the manufacturing quality (e.g. the zippers weren't sewn on properly and would frequently jam) -- even the design had problems (e.g. a magnet covered by fabric in a place where it would be exposed to so much friction during everyday use the fabric wore out within one month or so).