Yes the consumer is a willing accomplice, but the power lies with the manufacturer.
If there is no locally sourced, competitively priced product to purchase, the consumer is basically powerless.
When a beltway slimeball convinces his uncle to make a raw material into a boogeyman and impossible to source, I guess it really is the manufacturer who can't get supplies to make product who is to blame. Obviously he just needs to up the bribe to beat the slimeball ;)
There's a lot of variables in the system. "Corporate greed" makes a good headline, but at the end of the day it's a symptom and not a cause. Taking a more wholistic approach to imports and regulation could address much of it, but when congress paves the path to shitty behavior in gold, there's no other path a risk-averse insurance and banking industry will allow.
