No idea. Maybe Lenovo includes purchasing power in the price calculation for some reason, such as making more money in the U.S. while gaining market share here in Czechia, where purchasing power is lower. Apple may be able to afford not to do that.
The Acers of the world can sleep well. The price of Neo in my country is about $810. Two months ago I purchased a brand new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 with an AMD 7533HS CPU, 14" OLED display, 32 GB DDR5 and 1 TB SSD for about $860. And it also has an unibody metal case. This Lenovo offers much better value for almost the same price, and you can install Linux on it.
For all those people complaining about it being e-waste: With such a relatively long battery life, you will probably lose/misplace the charging cable anyway, and that cable is probably more e-waste than the ring itself.