Whatever automation you can do in the US you can also do in China but with lower regulation. Whatever labor costs left over are also cheaper. What I mean is that automation is not an inherent advantage of the US.
There's no reason to think the US has an advantage in automation. In fact, it's much easier as an automation engineer to design automation processes for the factory that's around the corner than to do so for a factory in another time zone that 90% of your team has never seen in person.
100% agree with regulation. That’s why US trade policy is the main cause of the decline. It should reflect regulatory arbitrage. It’s utterly pointless to save the environment in the US and poison it in China.