Here's a basic sweater for $3.19: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/women-s-autumn-clothi...
Find me one made in the US within a factor of 10 of that price.
In LA's fashion district I can find you a locally made cotton-polyester sweater for under $10, and the seamstress is making a living at that price and using quality cotton-polyester fibers rather than the scratchy cheap QA-rejects. I could probably even find an actual cashmere sweater for under $50, made out of cashmere wool.
Again, the factor of 10 thing.
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Live-Womens-Cardigan-Sweater/dp/...
You're also both times looking at sources direct from China, which are taking advantage of that Universal Postal Union treaty situation that makes it cheaper to ship from China to the US than to ship within the US. If they were paying market rates for shipping the shipping from China would itself be more than $2.90. Notice how similar sweaters on Amazon end up being closer to the price of the made in USA one (or more) even when they're made in China, because then they're being shipped from within the US. (This is also why comparing wholesale prices is more relevant; the "free shipping" that gets incorporated into the price is less of the total.)
And it's difficult to even find non-boutique apparel made in the US at this point, because most of the ones that try to compete on price rather than status then lose to China on price by a small percentage and go out of business. But the boutique prices don't represent what it actually costs to manufacture in the US, they're just the ones who can stay in business in the US.
American-made jeans are anywhere from $160-300. I can also buy some jeans at Levi's for $60-100.
It is not as small as you depict and also not as large as you are responding to, but it is still a very real gap.
Comparing almost boutique level jeans made in the U.S. with mass produced Levi's made elsewhere doesn't help us determine price differences in off-shoring vs. manufacturing in the U.S.
I think what we would need to know is how much would a pair of Levi's cost if all of them were produced in the United States.
tl;dr: What is, isn't necessarily what could be.
Except that the difference was never that large and never had to be that local. What happened was that they didn't want a $42 sweater made on the same continent over a $40 sweater made on the other side of the world, because it gave back $2 in change. But monoculture and lack of supply chain diversification was never not worth $2 -- the bill just doesn't come due until it does.
And this didn't happen on its own either. This was conscious policy across the board. The first world was content to impose e.g. pollution and labor regulations locally but not impose the same requirements on the manufacture of imported goods, with foreseeable consequences to where things are manufactured.
Meanwhile China wanted to grow through exports, so they adopted policies like currency devaluation that not only made American and European manufacturing uncompetitive but even manufacturing in other countries with lower labor costs, so that many goods are now produced only in China.
It's one thing when something is produced in China but not the United States when it's also produced in Mexico, Brazil, India, Turkey, etc. It's something else entirely to make the whole world dependent on one country. And customers didn't choose this, government policies did.