cartridge bottom bracket bearing "hitch" or slight grinding feeling in one spot when the spindle is turned by finger pressure

To elaborate a bit, I believe that the term mechanics or engineers may use is that the spindle is binding at a certain point in the rotation. As already pointed out, this isn't normal.

I can only speculate on the cause without having the item in hand. However, all manufacturing processes produce variance in all their parameters. For example, the weight of bicycle rims will have some small variance from rim to rim. Variance is related to the concept of tolerances, which are the limits of the permissible variance, and if a part is out of tolerance it may not work correctly. For example, we might say that a press fit BB shell can have a diameter of 46.00mm + 0.00mm, -0.05mm. So, it can't be bigger than 46.00mm, but it can be very slightly smaller - if it's too big, a bearing cup will fit sloppily and creak, but if it's a bit smaller it can be squeezed in. (46.00mm is the actual diameter for PF30 shells, but the tolerances are made up based on an engineering drawing I have seen. The tolerance for BB shells is actually asymmetric; tolerances can obviously be symmetric if desired.)

It seems possible that the BB shell is not round, I.e. it is wider at one part and narrower in another, and the bearings are binding at the narrow bit. If true, this BB may have exceeded the manufacturer’s tolerance for roundness, or perhaps the manufacturer has poor tolerances. (NB, one way to measure roundness in such a way that it can then receive a tolerance is here.) A more careful supplier should ideally have caught this in quality control - my impression (I don't work in the bike industry and I have no engineering background) is that a supplier would check random samples in each batch of components it receives from its factory. If enough samples fail QC, they might test the entire batch. (NB: a component supplier might contract things out to a factory that they don't directly own, pretty often in Taiwan, mainland China. I'd assume that good factories also do their own QC checks on the manufacturing floor.) A manufacturer might scrap or recall a whole batch of items if enough are defective, like Curve Bicycles did with a batch of its GXR forks. If an out of tolerance item made its way to the consumer, a reputable supplier or manufacturer would replace it under warranty.

I have no experience with Hope items, but if I got a BB that had binding like this, I would start a warranty claim. None of the BBs I have ever handled exhibited binding before installation.

Not all cheaper parts are guaranteed to be out of tolerance, but generally, if all else is equal, halving the tolerance (I.e. doubling the required manufacturing precision) may at least quadruple the cost. This fueled my suspicion that the binding might have had to do with tolerances. The manufacturer could naturally decide to use cheaper materials rather than slacken their tolerances past an acceptable level, but since they used a titanium spindle, there might not be as much room to cut costs with materials.