Reading this as a non-American. Isn't 'opportunity' the whole reason behind immigration?
If your country relies on continuous supply of heroes and not sound systems and policies, no one single person can save you.
its called being a capitalist; anyone leaving money (capital) on the table by favoring thier home country will get squashed by those who dont...
Assuming that the goal is saving the American industry (whatever that means) - if the plan is 'good people will save it' then failure is already baked in. That plan never works. The plan should be 'whoever saves it will become fabulously and disgustingly wealthy' - then greedy opportunists will save it for you and people can go protest about how greedy they are.
Relying on good people to act is dicey. Relying on greedy people to act is a safe path.
I agree with you that trying to compete on low-cost, low-margin is a race to the bottom. We could conceivably bring manufacturing of iPhones back to America. I would also imagine that manufacturing of silicon is largely automated, so the US could try to build the best fabs.