Caley Fretz wrote a great editorial about this nine years ago when he was still at VeloNews:
https://www.velonews.com/gear/the-to...yth-of-origin/
Asia has the most efficient and best supply chains and manufacturing capacity for making bikes in the world. Making carbon bikes is particular sensitive to economies of scale given the relatively large capital investment in molds, autoclaves, laser cutters, automated tape layup machines etc required for modern carbon frames. Big manufacturers like Giant and Merida can take in spools of raw carbon fiber in one end of their factories and spit out extremely high quality bikes that use the latest technology at the other end. Giant is able to use extremely advanced and efficient automated production techniques on the latest TCR that very few other manufacturers can match. The result is fantastic riding frames (read any review of the latest TCR) that are some of the best quality in the world even though they are reasonably affordable.
It's really hard to make quality bikes anywhere else at a reasonable cost, but automation is slowly changing that if a company can make the investment. On a recent "Nerd Alert" podcast, Gerald Vroomen talked about the difficulties of moving even a small part of 3T's manufacturing to Italy (
https://cyclingtips.com/2021/09/nerd...-carbon-fiber/). 3T had to completely revamp production techniques and materials. Small producers can make batches of bikes in the US, the UK or Italy but you're going to pay a lot for it unless the manufacturer is able to automate. I wonder if it's worth it..
The other issue I have is that "Made in ..." designations are really tenuous these days, bordering on fraudulent. For example: Colnago has proudly and publicly designated their top of the line C64 as "Made in Italy", but that bike's tubes are made in Asia, all they're doing in Italy is gluing them together and painting them. The same was true of the prior C60 and the the C59 before that etc. Similarly, for years Pinarello danced around where their bikes were actually made while they draped their Asia-produced, mega-buck Dogma in Italian flags. Again, I personally think Asian produced carbon frames can be the best in the world. I just object to trying to confuse customers.