It does have a significant advantage, though. In addition to being an American product, it shares commonality with the USAF fleet of T-6AII trainers.
If you take a close look at the airplanes they use the same engine, a Canadian produced Pratt/Whitney. The AT-6 is supposed to upgrade from an 1100shp engine to the same 1600shp used by the ST (they are experiencing some handling problems which caused them to alter the terms of the recent fly-off in NM which, according to USG observers the ST was clear winner). The seats are UK produced Martin Baker's. And while the ST's fuselage is made in Brazil, if you look in the access panels of both you see essentially the same avionics, etc. In fact, the ST is 87.8% "Buy America" compliant.
I flew the ST last year while the Imminent Fury program was ongoing. The cockpit is laid out like any modern 4/4.5 Gen fighter. After take-off, overheads and slow-flight I was using the CCIP system after 20mins into the flight. In my opinion we're wasting time and money waiting for HBC to cobble something together while a superior product is available now...and the taxpayer isn't going to be stuck with development costs.
BTW, HBC is 50% owned by a Canadian firm.