It might be either one of those two. Tough to say which one. If it did move after it was assembled at the factory, then it could be pretty easy to fix.
Is there any movement in the reel seat now? Try and see if the seat will rotate with some mild twisting.
To remove it, this method has worked on some rods for me, just depends on the quality of epoxy that was used in the first place to glue it up.
Place the butt section in a plastic bag, like a gallon zip lock freezer bag and secure it in place. Bring a pot of water to a boil, immerse the seat into the water and let the water heat it up, give it a few minutes, and with a heavy glove on, try turning the seat off. Sometimes this works. If it does come off, just sand down the butt section and replace the seat, lining it back up. Just use a decent "long cure epoxy", I'd shy away from 5min stuff.
Your other option, just cut it off and replace it, which might be more of a project than you might want to get into with a $50 rod.
You might want to post a couple of pictures of the reel seat, that might give us a look at how large of a job it would be if you were to "cut" the seat off, like where it meets up with the cork, what type of hood is it, hidden, flush, ect. I remember the Imperials, but I cannot picture the seats on them.

Before you do anything, try casting the rod. Unless you are doing tournament casting, you might find it is not as big a problem as it looks. Sure, you may find you loose some distance, but it still fishes well.

Put a reel on it. Many times there is enough room in the seat hoods to cant the reel slightly.
Frankly I’d probably leave it. I have a tendency to angle my arm anyway so that would probably compensate.

Looks like a wood insert, right? The hardware is glued to that. Only the upper hood would need to be rotated to the alignment you prefer. Use an old scrap of leather to pad some plier jaws, and don't use any more force than can be easily applied without a strong squeeze or twist. Quick high heat. Jiggle loose with the pliers. Don't force. It may reset on its own but will probably need to be glued again. If it makes you feel better, protect the cork and the insert with multiple wraps of masking or painter's tape. If that smolders in the least, more than enough heat has already been applied, but you will know before any minor harm is done.

That seat has a mortise in the barrel end, just rotating the front hood is going to do absolutely nothing to remedy the issue at hand.

If you enlarge that photo, it looks to me like the hood is not “true” to the mortise section of the wood insert. It looks to me like the hood did move to the right about 10 to 15 degrees off center, if looking down on the seat.

If it bothers you that much, remove it like I told you and reinstall it. I’d try the boil in a bag first before going to a heat gun.

I just looked at that picture again, it also looks like the barrel end is not true to the insert? Does the wood insert also have a mortise or is it just the hardware? It’s tough to tell in the picture.

Thanks guys! The wood insert is perfectly round/cylindrical, no mortise to accommodate the reel. The hood that is attached to the grip is not in line with the opposing part on the other end of the wood insert where the screw thread is left out to accommodate the reel. The gap in the screw thread being more off with regard to the alignment of the guides. What do you mean by quick heat? Heat gun/hair dryer as opposed to the plastic bag in the pot?

P.S.: great instructive video!

Hi! This is an update. I thought you might like to know how it went. I used the plastic-bag-boling-water-method. The butt cap and the barrel with the thread came off easily after 2 minutes. Encouraged, I thought I might also try to get the other half of the reel seat that sits just below and in the grip. No chance. Ended up boiling the lower half of the grip for 20 min without the plastic bag. No movement whatsoever. Before getting angrier, I told myself to stop. Experience with myself that I collected over the past decades told me that going further down this road would inevitably lead to nothing but rod destruction. I re-epoxied the threaded barrel and butt cap on. They now sit straight. The part that is attached to the grip is still a bit off. Overall, the reel position has significantly improved. I don not find myself thinking about this when fishing anymore.

I have absolutely no experience with St Croix rods but I’m curious, is there any chance the rod wasn’t a St Croix built rod? In my early rod building experiences, upper hoods like that were always embedded into the cork grip. Take a look at the model number on the rod, if built from a purchased blank there may be a “B” at the end of the model number. This doesn’t correct the situation but may explain why the alignment wasn’t perfect.

Jeff