Having been in the computer industry for over 40 years, there is a constant phenomenon called "infant mortality." No matter how much you test, how thoroughly you engineer, how carefully you package and ship, a certain percentage of electronic equipment will fail shortly after being put in service. Nobody can escape that phenomenon. Even simple products like light bulbs have that same phenomenon. Good manufacturers, like Apple, are better than bad manufacturers, and can therefore charge more for that lower probability, known to the public as "reliability" but even Apple will occasionally have a dud arrive at a customer location, or to have it die on first power up or fail soon after being put in service. In the case of the OP, there are several options: 1) call Apple, report the problem, ask them to ship a new Superdrive under Applecare, explaining that it's an hour drive to the nearest store, 2) drive to the store with the bad drive and exchange it there, 3) do nothing and whine about how Apple is arrogant, insolent and unfriendly, all of which are simply untrue. If you choose either of the first two, I would suggest that being friendly is much more likely to obtain your desired result than being abusive.
And as for US manufacturing, when I lived in England there was a car parts provider called Lucas who made electrical parts for your automobiles there. The head of Lucas was derisively called the "Prince of Darkness" for the many failures of those electrical components. The Queen put him on the Honours List a few years ago, so now he is the "Knight of Darkness." So before you make comments on US manufacturing, you might look around the glass house in which you live, sir.