Many countries have a bar that must be reached to claim “made in ----“.
In the US, it’s “all, or virtually all” materials & components as a percentage of the wholesale price. Given the very low cost of typically Asan sourced drum shell components, it’s entirely doable to produce shells in the USA with attributable high percentage cost, and complete the build with imported shell hardware whilst conforming to “Made in USA” requirements, especially considering “virtually all” is not the subject of percentage clarification.
Ok, so that’s the consumer optics stuff out of the way. It should be of no surprise that global brands source globally, & smaller brands tend to source more locally, but most small builders are still obtaining their shell hardware from imported sources via in country distributors. It’s simple sourcing quantity leveraging economics.
In Western markets, sourcing genuinely home market manufactured shell hardware is a significantly more expensive option, so there has to be a quantifiable benefit to doing so. That benefit is usually quality and / or material upgrade, but in reality, the average drum customer cares little about such things, especially if the retail cost uplift is considerable, leaving only those builders with a very defined design goal prepared to place performance over competitiveness. I’d struggle to count such builders globally on one hand.
The bottom line is, for most players, does this all really matter in terms of ROI when selecting an instrument? Given the vast majority of use contexts, I’d say no. If you have very specific performance expectations, or your patriotic flame burns strong, then maybe it’s an itch worth scratching. Outside of that, buy at a level within your budget that’s fit for purpose.
As a footnote, made in (insert country here) should never be taken as a mark of guaranteed quality. I’ve seen both exceptionally good, & exceptionally bad quality originating from just about any market you can name.