Oh, golly, can I relate! I did not do actual “buying”, but one of my jobs after designing a part was to hunt down who would be the best supplier, get quotes, and work with them, right up to the actual purchase order for the parts. (Then I headed QC when the new parts came in, resolved problem, etc.)
We had a production line manager who thought I had an easy job. He wasn’t the one up @ 3 a.m. with a overseas vendor with marginal English, trying to get things “right”!
BTW, you are right about American workers, or at least most of them as of a decade or more ago: Sure, we had plenty of poor employees, but we also had lots of good and even some terrific employees. It used to irk me to no end when I was not allowed to create a modest program to teach our often interested employees a little more about our product. Sometimes I wondered if our CEO was afraid a lowly line worker might ask a question he had not thought of...
“problems” — heheh. There is “marginal English” and “typo English”...