First, sorry for the response delay. I don't know why I didn't see your answer.
As for the case in point, in fact, I think CSS can be as fast if not faster. But that's totally for me to prove. Hehe.
That's why I'm working on a set of simple rules for efficient styling with CSS. A website with documentation, examples and tools is in the works. If you're interested, I can give you a heads up when it's online.
Feedback from Tailwind users is important and would absolutely be welcomed!
PS: thank you for the explanation.
Outside of consumer apps I am struggling to imagine a case where the HTML/CSS perf delta would be more important to capture than faster development time. I suppose part of why that doesn't seem like a good faith question is because you don't believe Tailwind dev time to be faster, so the tradeoff that I'm trying to evaluate is totally inane.