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Arduino was originally Italian, made in EU. There are modern power tools, car electronics, and coffee machines made in Hungary - I'm only listing the ones I know for sure. The components however - IC, resistor, capacitor, etc - are nearly all from China.



Semiconductor fabs, especially for high-tech stuff, still are somewhat spread around the world at least (even though the later chain isn't, i.e. you might see a fab in Germany, and the cut wafers then being flown to Vietnam to put them in the plastic IC cases because that's cheaper).

For simpler components (resistors, capacitors) special types still have some manufacturers in the west (e.g. high-precision, especially robust variations, ...). Cheap mass-production not so much.

I remember trying to find out if you can get EU-made LEDs, and the result was that maybe some high-power ones by OSRAM would fit the bill, but it wasn't clear what was made where.


You can get LEDs from Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan. You just don't get the same level of quality that you get from top-end Chinese manufacturers that way. Similarly passives are often made in Mexico (to bypass US tariffs), Vietnam, Malaysia again, Thailand. But the most consistent quality product at large quantities still comes from China.


Japanese LEDs, eg Nichia seem to be pretty high quality: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-gamut.shtml


Yep, Nichia LEDs are excellent. But I prefer Chinese manufacturers for LEDs - they're much easier to deal with and quality is good and consistent and availability is great. I recently had some LED emitters custom made in China (low quantity) and the light properties are exactly to spec. I wanted a combination of cri and color temp that wasn't available off the shelf in that form factor. At the quantities I wanted, nobody outside China would even talk to me, but I had several options to choose from in China and the first one I talked to delivered, exactly to spec, exactly on time.


Japan still has components if I'm not mistaken, LEDs especially.




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