Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese products were synonymous with cheaply made. Anyone over the age of 50 probably remembers cheap Japanese transistor radios when they were a kid. We all believed, in the day, that the more transistors a radio had, the better. That wasn’t necessarily true, but try telling that to a 9-year-old. And of course, we all knew that Japanese radios might claim to have 10 transistors but really only five of them worked.

Conventional wisdom was U.S. made: Good. Japanese made: Bad.

Fast forward 20 years or so, and the same biases, rightfully arrived at, were aimed at Chinese products. As trade relations grew during the 1980s, so did the influx of often poorly made Chinese products. Most people believed that if a product was made in China, it wasn’t going to last. But is that still true today?

Long after Japanese quality was on par or better than U.S. products, the bias that Japanese products were poorly made continued. Ironically, the same situation existed for U.S. automakers when long after U.S. automobile quality caught up and at times surpassed foreign brands, the bias that U.S. cars didn’t have the same quality as their foreign counterparts persisted. Bad impressions linger long after fact.

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