> They're both doing well but I'd lean towards China is winning on atoms in light of a huge manufacturing base they can AI-ify.
Why would an American company outsource manufacturing to China if the labor cost is the same in both places? The entire reason the Chinese manufacturing base exists is to exploit cheap labor.
What would be the point of shipping products across the ocean?
Labor is not the only cost in that equation though, there's business regulations, the cost of the operators/repair that troubleshoot and repair the bots when they break, etc. a lot of which could be cheaper still than the price of a container on a slow ship from China.
China doesn't have to ship parts across the ocean. US manufacturers do, because we gave up the whole bottom/middle of the manufacturing supply chain to China decades ago in pursuit of lower costs. In China, the maker of the parts you need to build your product is a few blocks away. In the US, the maker is in China.
And, if you need changes, you can go talk to them the same day you see a problem.
There are more competitive advantages such as expertise, supply chain, regulations, capable government, scale... If it were all price, there are countries that are much cheaper than China.