[Asclepius]

Neither of which can be assembled quickly to regain a lost market.

Yeahright. That's why we lost world war ii. We simply couldn't build a war time industrial base largely from scratch fast enough. Again, dude, if you're only advantage is price, and they begin to rise again, you lose.

[Last Dakotan]

We had the skilled basis for an industrial machine going into WWII.

As a critical point, WWII required that the machine tool plants of New England be enlarged. These plants and their skilled base of craftsman don't exist anymore.

[Paul Ross]

Yeahright. That's why we lost world war ii. We simply couldn't build a war time industrial base largely from scratch fast enough. Again, dude, if you're only advantage is price, and they begin to rise again, you lose.

Your knowledge of history is suspect. We didn't have to build the defense industrial base "from scratch" in World War II. We already had a domestic industrial base...sorely underutilized... that was quite available for conversion.

To repeat: The U.S. industrial base was INTACT going into World War II, as we had protected it to the max with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff so reviled by your side. And that protected industrial base was what made the difference in the war.

Wither now that industrial base?