FWIW you could ship a 40ft container of mugs (something like 20,000 of them individually packaged) from china to Seattle, say for a rough cost of about 10c per mug.
Right - but what I was pointing out is making that particular scenario more expensive doesn’t shift the overall incentives that much of the COGS are significantly different.
I've thought recently that the low cost of container shipping blows the economic theory of comparative advantage out of the water. At least the common and naive one that's based on national/political boarders.
Ask why Australia ships iron ore and coal to China to be made into steel.
Bulk freight of nonperishable things is cheap.