> I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines.

... like Factorio, just in real life.

> The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation.

A lot of that is to prevent our cities from looking like China did before they haphazardly cleaned up shop before the Olympic Games. Remember all the smog alerts? Athletes being afraid the smog and pollution would impact their performance?

> How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

There's a tool for that, it's called tariffs - basically, make it uncompetitive for manufacturing moving off to a country that systematically undercuts pricing even at the cost of its environment.

Unfortunately, the current administration doesn't even have the concepts of a plan on what they want to achieve with tariffs. It's mind boggling to watch.