I always repair my vehicles, appliances, and most electronics but I have been seeing more and more cheap plastic parts in newer products. Not just that, alot of motors in cheap consumer electronics are not using aluminum windings instead of copper.
As an engineer myself, I understand that all these companies are doing is reducing costs. They tell their engineers to come up with ideas to reduce costs and using a material that is "good enough" is an easy way to reduce costs.
The consumers and producers alike are also being squeezed by arbitrary taxes and regulations that necessitate skimping on quality for the sake of price on each end of the exchange. When the corporate interests are subsidized, that tends to produce the perverse effect of increasing costs and incentivising worse quality too.