The US did have contact tracing early on though, and as far as anyone can tell it did work pretty well at containing the cases coming in from China - maybe not well enough that it could've contained them indefinitely, though that'd be a tall order and we'll never know because this wasn't even the problem. Genetic tracing shows that cases in the US were driven by spread from Europe, almost certainly Italy given the circumstances, which no-one was really equipped to spot. The media just downplayed and omitted the contact tracing that happened in the US because it didn't fit the anti-Trump narrative.
Now, of course Taiwan had a lot of success until recently and they did ban travel from China earlier than anyone else - but again, the role of this was almost entirely omitted from the early US news coverage because it didn't fit into the anti-Trump narrative. Their success was attributed to their Covid testing and tied into to the story that this was something Trump screwed up due to his focus on border closures and travel bans. (Meanwhile in the real world, their Covid testing basically collapsed the moment the disease got a foothold - in May 2021 when this had become a mass-produced commodity.) They also didn't have the level of travel from Italy that the US and other worse-affected countries did...
Now, of course Taiwan had a lot of success until recently and they did ban travel from China earlier than anyone else - but again, the role of this was almost entirely omitted from the early US news coverage because it didn't fit into the anti-Trump narrative. Their success was attributed to their Covid testing and tied into to the story that this was something Trump screwed up due to his focus on border closures and travel bans. (Meanwhile in the real world, their Covid testing basically collapsed the moment the disease got a foothold - in May 2021 when this had become a mass-produced commodity.) They also didn't have the level of travel from Italy that the US and other worse-affected countries did...