I remember hearing a conspiracy theory that some control freaks somewhere in some government (or all of them) basically agreed that each country should be focusing on some things and it seemed to be done basically so there was this completely unnecessary artificially forced interdependence which is why some countries that totally could have manufacturing don't really.

Vaguely related, are there auction sites around you? One of my friends uses this auction site where the bids happen online and if you win you go to the site to pick up the goods. At this one they apparently just bundle up stuff (I think they get it bundled in some cases) and you can get quite a lot of decent stuff for pretty cheap.