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.
I wont agree with you here. When a country is going through economy downturn they lack the necessary resources to manufacture products. Basically, the resources are available in the market but the cost of getting them will be high unlike the way it used to be. Normally, they dont need to use the little they have to push in quality since they will be having less production and it will also affect the market.
What they need at the moment, is to shift into producing something else they can sell out. Similar to what OP is saying. If they cant afford to produce new things, then they can offer services to other countries. giving them what they have in return of the resources to foster production in their country. One thing I will never forget is how trading started. It started long ago, between countries and the world war pushed for countries to become allies and rivals. Trading has not stopped. Countries are still trading between each other and I think that is what every country needs to do if they want their economy to not get so bad that they cant afford to continue production.