Japan went hard on automation as well, but their efforts were stunted in the late 90s by the rise of cheap labor in China along with their massive property bubble popping. Maybe now is a better time for it with AI tech advances, but I can’t help to see history repeating itself.
It's simple, if you have the supply chains already you have more to gain from automation. And as we know from TPS it's easier to automate processes we know how to master manually first.