Personally, I think that Supplier Selection would make a great discussion topic for a FIRST team. Catch phrases like Make in ... can be dissected, better defined, and evaluated against other criteria such as economy, ecology, sustainability, reliability, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_USA gives background to what the phrase means.
Making students aware of the complexities and how to research to get beyond the catch-phrases, will allow them to make informed choices on their robot, team tshirts, website hosting, etc. It can also be helpful in their daily actions outside of FIRST.
A first step might be to research some of the elements in the KOP. Basic NI information is available on ni.com/company, and additional details of our own supplier selection criteria is available from there. Annual reports such as
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/140220/nati10-k.html will provide additional material.
I'd be curious to hear about the outcome of such a discussion.
Greg McKaskle