Its highly likely that any tooling your buying from your local supplier has come from China. How many of you have tried buying direct? Over the years I started buying the odd electronic component here and there, then consumer goods and now tooling and even some machinery.
The main access point to anything you may be interested in is
http://www.alibaba.com/ you'll find what you want here and not just one supplier but many suppliers selling their version of the same product. Many of them are wholesalers and they say they expect that you to order a minimum quantity, but just ask if they do samples, I've never been refused. On one site for electronic connectors they even offered US$15 credit towards samples. You can buy a lot of connectors when the unit cost is 2c.
Many vendors will take paypal, and Alibabba provides an Escrow service. I've even taken a punt and used international money transfers. Every time the goods have turned up, and quickly.
The downside of going direct is the cost of shipping (it can be more than the cost of the goods) and an duties payable at your end but when you compare the overall costs its still cheaper than buying locally. I'm also not going to say its risk free but I've never been ripped off. Errors have been corrected and over payments credited.
An example of cost savings I was looking for some U2 collets for the U2 cutter grinder I had also purchased direct, this crowd did them
http://www.dzdrjj.cn/ so I started a dialogue with them. I also found they also did ER collets and I needed some to make up the part set I'd purchased when I started out. Both collet types were US$2 each when my local supplier wants about NZ$35 each for ER32 collets (US$30). The shipping worked out about US$3 each but that was still only US$5 for each ER32 collet. A no brainer really so I gave it a go, all the ER32 collets are now mixed together in a set and I can't tell the difference between the new ones and the originals.
The other factor to consider is quality, you're not going to get Moore and Wright but its no worse than you are getting from you local supplier and Id say perfectly adequate for the budget conscious model engineer.
No doubt there will be those of you who've tried this and maybe have a bad experience, others who may not be prepared to take the risk. But lets hear about the good and the bad? Some of you who haven't tried the direct route may be willing to.
The usual "I have no affiliation and am just a satisfied customer" blah blah applies.
Pete