I don’t think Pat has any useful answers. Manufacturing still exists in the US, we just make different things. I’ve read our output actually is at an all time high.
We’ve just reached a new level of mechanization which requires an all time low of semi-skilled labor. Robots replace workers on assembly lines.
However, he is right in that too many people are sucking up to China for no good reason, and Mexico.
Your post is absolutely correct. Measured in terms of the dollar value of the products made here in the U.S., our manufacturing output is at an all-time high. What we don't have, however ... and we will likely never have again ... is a manufacturing economy built around massive factories that employ thousands of people working multiple shifts. Those days are over. Even most industries in China don't operate that way.
I think it would be helpful for everyone who has an interest in this subject (Pat Buchanan included) to sit down and have a serious reality-check about the history of U.S. manufacturing. Too many people look at a very small window of time -- the post-WW2 period when U.S. manufacturing employment was enormous -- and think of that as the norm. The reality is that the post-WW2 period was the exception, not the norm ... because the U.S. was the only major industrial power to emerge from World War II with our infrastructure and industrial capacity intact.
I'm sorry Mr. Buchanan cannot go back to those "good old days" of Eisenhower, "Lassie" and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was all a construct and an anomaly of history, folks.