I couldn't help but to notice that a few Japanese guitar manufacturing companies (Ibanez, ESP) are leaning towards this trend.
I also noticed that they are also only doing this in the American market. Ibanez discontinued a lot of their Prestige line for the US market after the introduction of their Premium line.
ESP is also guilty of doing this. Marshall is also starting to do this (more of their models are MIC). These are very sad times indeed.
I can only hope that the quality of these parts will match their made in Japan/UK predecessors.
However, the truth is that I foresee more undesirable consequences. For example, prices of used gear may go up because of people flooding to eBay/CL/Guitar Center in order to buy the "better" products.
This wouldn't be so bad if vendors start importing models that are unavailable in the American market and start selling them online.
You can check here that ESP has kept most of their models in their UK site. The Japanese site has even more models along with their Edwards/LTD sub-brands.
http://espguitars.co.uk/
Same goes for Ibanez.
http://www.ibanez.co.jp/products/eg_top13.php?area_id=3&year=2013&cat_id=1