“Am I the only one that sees it this way?”
Probably so...
14 years ago our economy by the same measure was 3X China’s.
Our country has been in decline for a number of decades. When you look to correlate other measures of growth with this decline, what you also find is a decline in the birth rates.
This is not specific to the US alone.
It is happening throughout all of the modern western liberal democracies.
This is why investors look to emerging markets now for growth.
Lastly, it has nothing to do with free trade. The trade aspect (imbalances) is a symptom and not the cause of the disease.
To simplify the problem to it’s basic understandable form, you can state it by saying that all the western democracies gave up growth in favor of bigger governments to support welfare states. They also, at the same time, and as a result of the welfare states they created, have been resting comfortably on the efforts made by generations now dead and gone, and have done nothing for themselves.
In other words, they are spending their inheritances like drunken sailors and will soon realize that they have awoken from their stupor in the gutter.
Again.....this has nothing to do with fair or free trade.
So what percent of a manufactured goods retail unit price goes towards labor on average? Do you know?