it's not a binary though, cheap goods vs expensive.
1) there is a huge new category of cheap goods that simply would not have existed before globalization and container shipping. if you can't buy a $20 bubble machine for your kids, you're not going to buy a $40 one. you're going to just blow bubbles. This is also true for many kitchen gadgets, party supplies, etc
2) as has been discussed here, the repair/replace costs of the "cheap" goods complicate the issue significantly.
3) the most difficult issue to discuss is the impact this all has on the domestic and cottage economy, because it's the hardest to quantify, but it's very real. The presence of cheap chinese crap destroys people's ability to make money with their skills and eventually destroys those skills. Once you can go to a big box store and buy crap you don't have to pay someone to make a better version. Once you are forced to replace something when it breaks because it either cannot be repaired or is so cheap to replace you can't justify the repair, the person who would have repaired it loses. This has profound effects on society that are easy to ignore because again they're very very difficult to quantify, but I've seen the disappearance of alteration shops and shoe repair and people's loss of the option to make a little money making halloween costumes or whatever. Some of this has been ameliorated by the Internet but that doesn't change the damage to the social fabric.
