I don't get how the Chinese suppliers are THAT much cheaper. I mean ok, I can understand 5, maybe 10 times the cost for US/Canadian production but hundreds of times the cost?
There is still a quality differential IMO. I use local makers for all high end boards using non standard laminates. Generally the consistency is excellent. Several years back I was using a Chinese vendor to proto low noise amplifiers. Of the batch there was considerable variation in performance simply due to variations in etching - boards looked great but under a microscope they were under-etched in many cases. We were never able to get consistency in these released products - we couldn't afford US prices in volume.
On a visit to that mid-sized contract maker in Shenzhen, I went through the board fab which was located in the basement level. Workers were actually standing in spilled chemical - it was just such a fast paced operation, there was no time to clean up. Also very little in the way of protective equipment. And it was later obvious they were under price pressures, because they were constantly asking us to allow them to do more of the product design work with higher margins.
American PCB's are expensive but there is actually quite a bit to producing a consistent high quality product including not least of which is costs associated with handling and disposing of chemicals. I have used Alberta circuits over many years and have never had a problem like that. I think with some of these RF products I actually saved money with local suppliers through time gained (or not lost chasing daemons). On one specialty product for example I actually sent the Chinese vendor a high quality substrate panel worth a couple of grand that was a sunk cost as they destroyed the panel in milling.
Now having said all that if I am doing a garden variety digital design or even a low frequency analog design some of this really doesn't matter much and I have used Chinese vendors for both proto and product.