You are correct that from an international perspective it does not not matter if the bulk of manufacturing occurs in Peking or Peoria,. One must remember one essential fact. The exchange between the chinese worker and the us consumer is not a free market exchange. The chinese worker is forced by legal tender laws to take the Yuan Remebi for his pay, and use it for his purchases. The US consumer and workers are likewise forced to take the dollar by the legal tender laws. All of the exchange between these two countries is thus funnelled into through two entities, the FRB and the Central Bank of China, as these are the entities who control the banks which are universally used on both sides of large commercial transactions.
Rarely does an American consumer meet a chinese producer face to face to exchange a tuna sandwich for a bowl of rice.
The reality of the exchange is that it is funnelled through the two central banks, who have the power to create more or less of each currency at the push of the button , and divert those flows from the world currency markets , as explained before, into markets that would probably not exist to the extent they do in a free market.
Thus the chinese central bank, in order to prevent a balance of trade, has funnelled over $100,000,000,000, thaats one trillion dollars from the world currency markets into the US debt market. The trillion dollar horde means that the chinese government printed a trillion dollars worth of paper yuans to pay the chinese workers, ripping them off, making them work for cheap. Meanwhile, on the other side of the massive manipulation, the american worker is gifted with all kinds of chinese bling, but his labor is artificially overpriced by the manipulation. Net result. The chinese works 16 hours and lives in a dorm but has a job, and the american worker is unemployed in his Mc Mansion with his flatscreen and a cheap tswo beer.
Spend some time wrapping your mind around the manipulation. The trade between China and the US is not free, because it is run through central banks that control the exchange rates through force and habit.