I think that’s a wildly optimistic take

Imperialists are nothing if not optimistic. They fundamentally believe that they will win and that they will win because their ideas are supreme.

I just don’t think this strategy is as well thought out and rational as you assume it is

I don't know that it's well thought out. I think you and I have to think it out, because we don't have the same priors they do. But I think they are intuitively navigating their ideology. They don't need to fully understand everything they're doing for it to be ideologically congruent. For example, I imagine they said "We need to build more shit here in America!", they were then confronted with business leaders saying they can't find people willing to do factory work, so the next thing they ask themselves is "How do we get more people to do factory work?". They try a few things like propaganda and pay incentives and it doesn't work. So the next thing they ask themselves is "Why don't people want to work?" And that's when the flood gates open: "Liberal arts education. Soft men. They think the work is beneath them because poor brown people do it." etc, etc. So they do this "brainstorm" and then for each thing they go, "OK, how do we counter this?"

Is that "well thought out"? I mean, it's at least basic managerial behavior that we know happens in corporate, and that's where these people all come from, so I just imagine they did the ritual and came up with a task list. And now they're executing it.

it will probably run into serious problems as soon as the first contradictions

That happens all the time in corporate. They never see it coming, but it happens every single time they do something like this. Those serious problems are not interpreted as contradictions, because that would require the possibility of self-awareness and humility. So instead what happens is each contradiction is seen as a moral failing of the people tasked with executing. So the bosses just double down on it with righteous fury, threatening to punish anyone who doesn't make it happen. This gets them in a cycle of getting rid of honest people and hiring yes-sycophants . This cycle continues for as long as the boss can stay in power. The longer the cycle continues, the deeper the chain of sycophants gets. First it's just the direct reports to the boss who get hired, fail, admit defeat, and are then replaced. Eventually they find someone who can survive the game, and they survive the game by replicating the boss's behavior, meaning they cycle through people, rather publicly and brutally, until their direct reports are all sycophants all playing the same game.

I also don’t think that you can conclude that just because something worked in the 19th century that it will also work today.

That's totally fair. I think that the bosses of America, however, only know how to look back to "what used to work" and don't really have a culture of doing new things while under stress. So most of the ruling class is going to look back to the industrial revolution and attempt to replicate any conditions they think existed as a form of magical thinking.

it will suffer from very low productivity and thus low international competitiveness

I don't think it's physically possible for the USA to become internationally competitive at all. I don't think any strategy will work, I don't think any means will bring about the conditions of competitiveness. The USA is too far behind. They squandered every opportunity to learn from Japanese industrial success, choosing instead to punish Japan instead of importing their ideas and spreading them. That was 50 years ago. Now, not only has China adopted best practices, they've got multiple generations of management thinkers and practitioners using a dialectical approach to production, they've got the edge on research, they've got the edge on population, they've got the edge on infrastructure, they've got the edge on international cooperation, they've got the edge on waste management, they've got the edge on power production, they've got the edge on central planning, they've got the edge on currency stability, they've got the edge on productive labor force....

I do not think there is ANY path to international competitiveness for the USA. They will be forced into junior partner status. I doubt the USA could maintain even a number 2 status for very long. The BRI is creating the conditions for a massive transformation that can only be solved by the USA bombing everything, which means that they won't be investing in competition, and since the USA can't bomb China because their bombs rely on Chinese parts, the USA will fall further and further behind China and anyone else that avoids America's hellfire.

In essence, the USA is cooked, but the leaders don't know this. And that's sort of the lens I am using to interpret the actions of American leadership right now. What would a bunch of corporate zombies do if they fundamentally believed the USA was the best and will always be the best despite the evidence before them? What would the combination of that level of fanatical optimism and liberal brain-rot result in and how is it resulting in the behavior we're currently seeing?