It is in part a consumer issue. Consumers want things as cheaply as possible, and companies that produce as cheaply as possible sell more product. We’ve seen the same issue with apparel; America wants cheap clothing, and so the mills in the US have largely closed, and most production has been moved overseas in order to make the final products cheap enough.
And while it’s partly a consumer issue, the fact that wages haven’t kept up with productivity–that is, more and more money is being skimmed out of the system by investors and executives rather than going to the workers–has been the driver towards making consumer goods more and more cheaply, simply because people have less purchasing power.