I agree, but competitive with what? How many of the tool lines of our youth are made in China, now? Stanley comes to mind. There are many others. You can always flog the slave labor until quality improves... 
The other side of that is that you can't MAKE American businesses pay 30 bucks an hour for a guy to put three bolts in all day long... And to add insult to injury, by the time witholdings and insurance are reckoned that's easily double that number. Along with managing health care as a perk and it goes on and on and on. THEN add in the absolutely predatory regulation system, ridiculous tax hoops, and the whole 9 yards. Don't even get me started.
Damn straight they go looking elsewhere. I did too. I designed a little gizmo I called a stob knocker. It was a really good idea. If you've ever cleared land, you know that it ain't so hard getting the overburden off, but the last few inches near the ground is another thing... And you can't hardly walk through where the brush used to be, what for all the stobs sticking up.
So I took a Snapper/Keys style power thatcher and modified it to take a set of after-market stumpgrinder blades. I beefed up the engine to handle bigger loads, added a hydrostatic drive system and castored front wheels, and a powered wheel height adjustment carriage that worked on the fly. Had I continued, I think I would have wound up putting tracks on it, but otherwise it was a very serious machine that filled a desirable niche.
At the time I was shooting for a base price around $1800, and I actually had promissory orders.
So I started looking at production. I started in local boutique shops, figuring to build it all myself with small companies and all American made. But the orders were big enough that I needed larger production, and right off the bat, I went to industry.
I couldn't make the numbers work. I couldn't get the parts made for that money, not to mention my own labor force for assembly.
So I looked east. Japan, Taiwan and SK at the time. I could get that mach8ine made, almost fully assembled, and delivered at my shop, for under $800/unit. Same specs, Same parts. Hell, same brands on the parts. AND they offered to floor parts at my facility for the first five years (for parts distribution for repairs).
Why the HELL would I make it here? \
As i turns out, I got shut down on it anyway. I was going to put the facility out in the sticks to give the hillbillies some work, but the land I bought had too many federal strings, and regulation stopped it cold. Rather than relocate I just shut it off.
There ya go. That's what this country does to an entrepreneur.
I am all for quality work, and quality workmanship, done right here in the US. For that we need people who will do just that, and who take pride in their work. That's going to take some major changes in a workforce composed largely of people who don't want to get their hands dirty and whose entire 'education' has programmed them to be unhappy with their world, not someone who takes pride in making even that little widget better than anyone else.
PS: Bring back shop class!
What it will take is hunger. That's what's left.
