Several moons ago working while in college I landed a dream job, working in the only high end shop in town, The Speaker Shop in NE Ohio. All the awesome perks of the job made it great. Fun customers, study while working, listen to music all day and all the Irish coffee you can drink. All while surrounded by great domestic and UK gear. Our area is solidly union leaning. GM one of the bigger employers in the area.
One day a customer comes in he is looking to begin getting into hifi. I put together a couple of nice systems and he listens. Impressed he picks out a really nice pair of speakers, TDL reference monitors, he’s fine with the fact that they are from the UK. But then we get stumped for power. He does not believe that Cary Audio is truly a US company, it’s not in a book he has from his trade union. Frustrated he leaves the shop without the gear he liked. Next day he returns, he’s made some calls and is now satisfied the Cary is made here in the US. He happily apologized and picks up his new system.
It mattered to him as a customer and us as a store, the US makes some of the best designed and built hifi in the world. There are also countless companies from other countries that do as well no doubt about it. But when I buy, my first checkbox is does it sound great, my second is where was it built..