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.
Having a substandard product would even complicate everything about that country against those they would be distributing to because somebody cannot give you a low quality products in disguise of a high quality and after paying a lot for it and it could not serve for the purpose and next time you would expect such country to buy from them again?, actually with how bitter such country could be they would inform those other countries they're distributing to of there fake products which would even add more to there economic recession because they would definitely have a bad relationship with all the countries they send the fake products to.