I see an obvious gatekeeper.

As a game, can you find any example of a foreign company successfuly setting up infra in the US to chalenge an US behemoth ?

Nokia on phones vs the Bell companies, Toshiba on laptops, pretty much everyone on the PC vs IBM, the entire Steel industry, the railroad industry before them, Japanese cars eating Detroit's lunch, Zenith and RCA's TV market, GE's appliance market.

Where is the gatekeeper in the Amazon/Aliexpress scenario? I'm sorry but I don't see that one yet.

EDIT: You did say "infra" and the best example I know of are the foreign car companies that set up factories here to build cars in the US to get around import issues.

Your second part and edit on car manufacturers is spot on: they were set a quota of "US made" cars and had to build factories in the US as a condition to continue chalenging US local makers.

I'd call that gatekeeping

I see those actions as setting up barriers but they do prevent people who can't meet that barrier out. My thinking of gatekeeping is more absolute, as in "there is no way for you to enter here" and thus "breaking the gate" would have legal and/or diplomatic consequences.

So for me there are two concepts, trade barriers and gatekeeping. Tariffs come under the heading of trade barriers as well in my view.

In that sense, your view on gatekeeping would be more like what happened to Huawei and how they were straight banned from the US market.

It sometimes happens, but few things are so black and white in politics and market regulations IMO. Killing the viability of an import route by pushing the tarrifs outside of the reasonable range is often enough and helps to avoid "smoking gun" headlines.

Japanese/German car makers

A whole host (most?) of clothing retailers all across the price spectrum, (H&M, Zara, Uniqlo at the low end, most luxury brands are European - this market is dominated by foreign firms)

Gas/gas stations (Shell, BP)

I think it'd be harder to find industries without foreign companies operating in the US

Restiction were set on import volume and makers comprnsated with US production as a politcal middle-ground. Those large amounts are partly (mainly ?) US cars.

> clothing

As you point out, luxury brands is where foreign companies have a presence. Feels like small potatoes to me.

> Shell, BP

Am not well versed in oil, but from a cursory look at Shell it has a US entity traded in the US market, partly producing US gas to US customers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_USA

H&M, Zara, and Uniqlo are luxury?

> Am not well versed in oil, but from a cursory look at Shell it has a US entity traded in the US market, partly producing US gas to US customers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_USA

It's literally the US subsidiary of Shell? It's still owned and controlled by the foreign company. This is how international business works once companies reach a scale where they employee large numbers of workers in a foreign country. See Ford of Europe, ExxonMobil Europe, Apple Japan etc - these aren't European/Japanese companies, they're just branches of American ones

None of them are building infra to a level that rivals US behemoths. They are well known foreigns brands, but nether commands a high market share nor represent an existential threat to US brands.

Top 2 on the market should be Amazon and Wallmart, in whichever order: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/amazon-unseats-walmart-to-be...

To note even Gap is bigger than any of those 3 mentionned.

I was pointing at the luxury market because there’s probably more competion from the outside.

> Shell

You’re not answering on how it operates in the US. Toyota US is in the same situation: it’s a subsidiary of the Japanese entity, but still “builds” cars in the US. Customer perceive them as Japanese cars perhaps, but if they‘re not marked at imported cars, that perception is just misplaced.

Shell US refining its own oil in the US falls in the same bucket to me.

The discussion was wether there was examples of foreign companies building infra to directly import foreign goods into the US market. It seems to be diverging into “are there well know and successful foreign brands in the US”

What's the best illustration of your point ?

As long as the US listens to or need the votes of their people, they cant be a free market.