If a country economy is having challenges it shouldn't have to affect there quality manufacturing because there should be sufficient resources for it, unless they intentionally decided to do it on the excuse of bad economy, at that time if there is something they should be more focus on is the quality because that is were some revenue will be originated from so actually if they cannot do that the people they usually supply to will find another country who could do better than them. Improvement is the new state we are because as a country who knows what bad economy could cause they wouldn't want to have it because it will cause a poor internal improvement on them.
When a country is facing economic meltdown or heading to recession that should be an opportunity for them to act wisely by improve in many things, like the standard of goods they produce, making sure to increase there production capacity, any country in economic mess, should not think of substandard goods because countries they do business with are wise too, any funny move can lead them to slide further because looking for new consumers will be a problem unless they will have to reduce the price of the goods which will not be healthy for economic that's such already, there should be strategic planing and implementation.