I have lots of Harbor Freight tools. Most of my go to sockets and combo wrenches are Craftsman from the mid-80's. The old saying "you get what you pay for" pretty much holds true for tools too. I've opened up a HF open end wrench putting a huge load on it with a pipe over the handle. Broken a few Craftsman sockets with breaker bars also. Seems like my old engineering profs were right about the stress vs. strain diagrams, load something hard enough, you've move out of the elastic region to the plastic region and it will yield.
I haven't bought too much import stuff through the mail, mostly have had my eyes on it before purchasing. An exception is QCTP holders. I have at least 15 of the turning/boring BXA style that are all imports. When I spend $11 for a CDCO vs. $60 for an Aloris, my expectation is to have to file/fine tune the CDCO to get it to work properly. I'm willing to do this on 5 of them for the same price of one Aloris.
Just my opinion, but I don't believe the Chinese purposely make bad products, they are dirty filthy capitalist communists (or whatever that government over there is called) and want our money. I just bought an AHP AlphaTig 200X welder, 2016 model. I think it's imported from China, otherwise there'd be big "made in USA" stickers all over it. They are a pretty popular entry level TIG welder and have evolved from the original 2013/14 model to 2015 then to 2016. Whoever makes them listened to their customer complaints and fixed/upgraded the machine. Not the type of response from someone only out for a quick buck.
We have the wonderful right of free speech in our country because of our wonderful armed forces servicemen who have paid the ultimate price many times. All so we can buy something cheaply made from overseas and then gripe about it not working right after the fact. If you have a bad experience with a tool or manufacturer, by all means post your experience as a heads up to others, then please move on . . .
I work for General Motors which produces and sells more cars in China than the USA. Can't tell you how many times I've read statements like "don't buy an American made piece of crap car, get a German or Japanese car". We work very hard to correct any problems in our cars to protect our customers, yet we are still fighting the "legacy" perception of producing junk. GM would love to open up more plants in the US and employ thousands of Americans ultimately boosting our country's economy (especially if we were exporting the cars). However, we're still fighting (for good reason from past sins) that "junk" perception. I'd give the Chinese the a fair shake. Of course, we're bankrupting the USA economy buy sending more dollars to China than we get back, but that's the subject for another ranting thread . . .
Bruce