Made In the USA vs. ?

99.99% is Made somewhere else……………..

Now Assembled in America is different.

are you seeing ripped threads, or out of tolerance?

I'm not convinced that broad generalizations, such as "all Chinese stuff is junk" or "Buy American for quality" or "only the French can make beautiful clothes (or wine!)" are particularly useful, although some might be — but not always for obvious reasons.

Nor is price always a good guide. It is tempting to suppose that the more expensive of two widgets will be better quality or more fit for purpose, but that's not always the case.

There are just too many variables.

A good part of the problem is that, for better or worse, we are part of a global economy, but that economy is by no means uniform either in regard to material availability, craftsmanship, productivity, attitude towards quality control, etc. etc. Nor do those things stay constant over time.

The companies who make and furnish the various widgets will — quite naturally — strive to strike a balance between total cost input and quality and final cost to the ultimate user — and each outfit will strike their own balance. On the whole, if something can be made in several different places, to an acceptable quality standard, a company — if they can — will select the place with lower total cost inputs so they can either make more profit or sell at a lower price. in many cases, it will be possible to make a higher quality product at the same or less cost in one place than in another, and it is quite reasonable to expect manufacturers to do so.

Interesting problem…

I agree with the above posts about pipe threads.

I was working out of town 2 hours away and luckily there was a small supply house in town. Used my credit card until I had our company open an account there because this job went on for a year.

We had most of our pipe and fittings delivered from another supplier, but you always need a place to pick up odds and ends especially on a big job.

They had a pretty good supply of ProPress and black fittings. I was rushing to get there before closing time for some black nipples and picked up a couple nipple runs of 3/4". They were in boxes, and I was in a hurry, so I just threw them in the truck and went to the job.

When I opened it out of the 11 nipples there was probably 4-5 that were useable and even those were not very good. Some of the ends were cut crooked and all torn up. You could tell they just had dull dies or no oil and just threaded them and threw them in the box. Awful.

Said China on the box.

Had another job once that was welded gas line. It wouldn't pass a pressure test. They welder we had was very good. We tested the fittings over and over and couldn't find it. Turned out to be a seam in the pipe which was foreign made.

The only thing I have purchased lately that is made in the USA is a host of Breeo fire pit products including the firepit. it performs as well as the Chinese SOLO fire pit. It is built very well , looks better, and my wife never fails to find something for me from their website to add to my collection. Their engineering is second to none.

Very difficult to find anything made here.

Ward (Made in USA!) Fittings have never disappointed. Anvil (USA) also VG. Imports? Crooked threads, sand holes....no thanks… labor trumps material cost when you have to take it apart. Mad Dog

I'm a Locavore (shop local, Mom & Pops whenever possible, support local families and economy) to begin with. Add the fact that American Made stuff is almost always more durable & superior, it's an easy choice. Conversely, if American stuff was garbage, All bets are off. Mad Dog

HUH?! is that a chain location or something?

I'm pretty sure my company completely stopped carrying import black fittings… We tried to play that game racing to the bottom briefly but nobody wanted to buy them lol. Luckily we have always stocked Ward and Anvil, I think a few of our odd size nipples are made in south korea, no more or less issue with those than the US ones.

you tell him your willing to pay for the quality they’ll stock em.

The above comments are all valid.

The experience with Chinese fittings is expected. They are a low technology product a and the purchaser ("manufacturer in the US") does not have any quality control over the production in China. The Chinese produce an inferior product based upon thread OD, and pitch diameter and the product sells in great quantities in the USA. So, why would anybody try to improve the quality of this product?

Now, take the example of Apple who build cellphones in China. I am quite sure they have an extensive staff ON-SITE in China that inspects a certain percentage of all products and rejects the entire batch if one of them is flawed.

This cannot be done with plumbing fitting due to the low value.

So, it always depends on whether the US manufacturer can expend the funds to ENSURE that the product meets the specification.

Would you recommend using Midea minisplits? Made in China and sold under so many different names. Sold by "american" companies. And they cost a good bit less than, say, Fujitsu or Daiken etc.

As much as I hate to admit this, I have had WAY better luck with foreign materials. I used to be very pure on American made everything (aside from circulators) and after countless cracked or otherwise effed up fittings and components from Ward, Anvil, Elkhart, Uponor, Spirotherm, Webstone, and recently Lochinvar I've about had it with everybody. Valves and pump flanges in particular, I've been using Bluefin almost exclusively for several years now and have NEVER had a problem out of several thousand units, while Webstone and Apollo seem to have about a 20% failure rate. Nipples and black fittings are 90% import now for the same reason. At least a dozen callbacks from cracked Ward or Anvil tees/elbows/unions on gas, and not a single one from the imports. Don't get me wrong, I love Lochinvar boilers too and have several hundred in the field but the past year has been completely ridiculous with QC issues. I had 32 of them in 2024 that needed some sort of attention right out of the box, and am currently on week 5 of waiting for a control board for a regular old NKB-110 that failed after 3 days. Navien is looking better and better every day.

You can almost break this into two categories: Consumers, and Producers.

1. Consumers want cheap, and many readily accept the cheapest junk available.
2. Producers want quality and longevity, since they lose money and are forced to redo work over if it's junk.

Yep. "Cash cow" businesses that make high quality products year after year are of no interest to private equity/investment bankers as their equity value doesn't change. They make money running up stock price which is most easily done by cutting costs. Works for a bit, they sell out and we get more crap products living off the brand. Over and over. 😕

I've noticed that PSC oil burner motors made in China don't last long. When I learned Beckett was switching their sourcing to China, I bought up all the previous units I could find- OK, they came from "Rotomatika" in Romania, but they hold up better than the Chinese ones.