Firstly, it's a supply and demand thing.
Steel strung electric ukes... well their existence is not very widely known, so the big companies capable of mass producing cheap instruments have not exactly caught the bandwagon, nor see it as a profitable endeavour as of yet.
However, I totally agree that there is the potential for them to be cheaply produced, like some entry-level electric guitars are.
There are actually a few examples, such as this one:
Mahalo steel string electric
I've also seen a Harley Benton steel string cheapy somewhere too.. Kona blasters are cheap.. and I vaguely recall that Clearwater have a series of cheap steel-string electrics..
The expensive electric ukuleles, like Risa and Kamoa are expensive because they were made to a quality standard that puts them on par with expensive electric guitars.
Some guitars are thousands of dollars, then why are they worth 5 times more than a professional level uke?
If you want cheap steel stringed ukes, there is every potential for them to exist (and some already do, just not widely known). But their quality will suffer.
And my experience with entry level Fender Squire Strats were that they are quite hit-n-miss in quality control and ALWAYS need a full setup to be decently playable.