My Japanese Toyota has a greater US/Canada parts content percentage than an American Chevrolet, and the former is assembled in the US while the latter is assembled in Mexico. The only advantage US companies seem to have is nostalgia.
The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).
Toyota makes a lot of stuff in the US, and US automakers make a lot of stuff overseas. You can't really go by the nationality of the automaker anymore.
That said, there are a lot of reasons (environmental, regulatory, govt subsidies) why US companies can't imitate Chinese companies.
What a lot of people don't understand is that provincial governments in China do not have the ability to tax their citizens, but they are required to provide a host of social services. So what they do is start for profit companies, and use the profits of these companies to fund the state. This is the giant octopus of state owned companies in China. The same is also true of the central government, which does have the power to tax, but in practice is unable to collect income taxes from the vast majority of the population, which is why China's tax share of GDP is so abnormally low and the government is constantly cash-starved. Here, too, what happens is the government starts for profit companies whose revenue goes to the state. Sometimes a holding company is owned by the central government, but there are satellite ownership structures owned by provincial governments, with portions of these sold off to private investors.
Of course many of these state owned companies lose money, but they are subsidized by the central government in a hidden way, which is that state owned banks lend them money which is routinely forgiven, or stealth forgiven via artificially low lending rates and constantly rolling over loans. Effectively it is impossible for these companies to go bankrupt, which is why you ocassionally get huge scandals when the government allowed some real estate companies to go bankrupt in the past. People didn't think such a thing was possible.
So due to the quirks of taxation in China -- basically no one pays income tax -- the government is strongly aligned with for-profit businesses, as these are crucial to funding government operations. That could be anything from a cigarette company owned by a province to an airline, beer maker, construction companies, basically everything. Local officials sit on the board and have outsized ownership stakes, and profits go into the coffers of local and central governments as well as the personal bank accounts of officials.
As it is illegal to be a member of a non-government controlled union in China, the same officials can ensure harmonious labor relations. They also don't need to worry too much about environmental regulations because when the government inspectors arrive to check on the government steel mill, there is a strong incentive to make sure that this, too, is harmonious. And the state owned banks ensure cheap credit is available without too many questions asked.
This is how you can get enormous for profit companies in China that are not in any real danger from market competition, or from government regulation, or from labor strife, or from environmental regulations. Even energy consumption is subsidized.
But what you don't get is high levels of efficiency or labor productivity. This is the middle income trap that China is currently in, and it's not really a model that nations in the west can follow.
As a single example, let's look at China's largest steel maker, China Baowu Steel Group, since the parent brought up steel production and the need to "learn from the best". Baowu is a holding company 100% owned by the central government, but it owns child companies that are owned mostly by various provinces.
In terms of labor productivity, they produce about 550 tons of steel per worker per year (130 million tons of steel and 237,000 workers).
Let's compare that to, say, Nucor Steel in the US, which produces about 1000 tons of steep per worker. Or SSAB in Scandinavia which produces about 600 tons of steel per worker using non-fossil fuel processes. And both of these are under much stricter environmental regulations, and have real unions they need to deal with, and do not get the benefit of borrowing unlimited funds at interest rates that are well below the rate of inflation, and whose loans are routinely forgiven.
Nucor recycles steel, i.e. they don't do full steel making life cycle. They reheat leftovers, not farm to table. SSAB behind but closer to industry lead, like SKR POSCO or JP Nippon Steel. Useful comparison is Bao steel (not baowu) who built green field / automated mill and does 900+ tons on full life cycle steel, i.e. parity/better than POSCO or Nippon. But really the point is plenty of asian manufacturing examples for US to learn tier1 productivity.
On some SOE efficiency, Baowu conglomerate who absorbed sick state players to consolidate, their productivity basically running average of acquisitions due to corporate structure. SKR has their chaebols and Japan their Keirestus for functionally same SOE cleanup / receivership. That's more stability maintenance, which US does via zombie pork barrel job infusions.
I know, it's crazy. I am sure there are political/economic/historical reasons, but the central government does not share tax revenue with the provinces, putting the provincial government in a really tight spot.
Also, the inability of the central government to collect income taxes is something people in the West can't wrap their heads around.
In some sense, it's a nice problem to have -- sure you need to massively raise taxes, but you are only collecting 9% of GDP in taxes, so it's just a matter of getting up to the norm for advanced economies. It's not like your spending is out of control and you have to cut tons of social services to balance the budget.
But, it's still a political problem, because people don't like paying more in taxes anymore than they like social spending cuts.
However this decision to raise revenue through the corporate sector rather than taxing households introduces a host of problems by aligning the financial interests of corporations with the state.
So downstream of this taxation issue are many ripples.
So China uses the income from it's competitive sectors to fund developing technologies. This seems like the ideal way to thrive. All this is centrally owned and controlled and without taxing the people.
This is communism with the efficiency of the interwar USSR era. It seems the humility, altruism and spirituality of the Chinese culture don't let the system fall due to corruption and inefficiency, yet. Amazing. I am curious to see what will happen in a few decades.
The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).