Software development, for example, is often overlooked as a manufacturing industry because of an inherent assumption that something can't be "manufactured" if it is the product of human minds instead of machinery.
Manufacturing isn't manufacturing just because a product is made by machines. It's the dynamic sum of all the intellectual capital, design, R&D, plant & equipment investment, workforce-training etc. that goes into the finished tangible product.
I agree Software being a relatively new industry is hard to classify and does share certain characteristics with manufacturing. But is it really manufacturing? That is something the academic community and economists will be debating for a long time.
Yet even here, more and more of our software is being outsourced to countries like India. What do you think is going to happen in the high technology field when other nations have end to end control of both the hardware and software industries?
America will have precious few capabilities in technological development and all the future innovation that technology creates…that’s what.
Maybe China and India will feel sorry for us, remembering it was, after all, America that willingly handed over its technology to them and perhaps cut us some favorable deals on their technology equipment. Then again, maybe not.