If you can quote spindle runout, you know perfectly well that there's no meaningful IP in this market segment. That would have been achievable by any number of manufacturers a hundred years ago.

It's a pure manufacturing cost play to make something precise enough, rigid enough, and light enough[0] while being inexpensive enough for the market segment it's aimed at.

Is it a bummer that a US manufacturer went out of business trying to make money at that play? Yes. Is there anything nefarious going on with IP theft? Absolutely not.

[0] This is being sold to customers who don't hire riggers to move their machines.

But isn't this completely fine ? The US became an industrial powerhouse by doing the same. Even barred foreign inventors from obtaining parents in the US. The U.S. Patent Act of 1793 was explicitly structured to favor domestic industrial growth at the expense of foreign inventors. Provided total legal immunity within the U.S. for commercializing pirated ideas. Only when the US became #1, did international protection of its patents became a priority.

China merely followed the American approach towards industrial success.

This isn't "clones/copying," but rather "Chinese people making things." It isn't like they're stealing our exclusive "lathe technology." They're just making lathes.

It's certainly destructive to local companies, but that's what tariffs are for. If you think we should be making lathes, then throw tariffs on countries that make them cheaper. If that just moves the pressure to a consumer who still can't afford local lathes, stop handing free money to stockholders and real estate owners and start handing it to people who buy things.