Every 10-20 years, to sustain economic expansion, America needs to invent and produce something the rest of the world wants, whether it is automobiles, televisions or personal computers. The PC and the internet/web business was the last great invention. That was 20-25 years ago.
Clinton got to ride that wave.
Regardless who becomes the president, the key to a spectacular economic rebound is to discover and build the next great invention. However, putting capitalists and capitalist economic leadership in charge will certainly improve things, it won’t be great again until we get a handle on the next great thing that nobody can be without.
The problem is contained in your sentence. We still invent and create many things the world wants, but they are more and more produced in cheap labor nations and not here.
Until we return to producing the bulk of what we consume, we will continue to become a poorer nation with less and less opportunity for our citizens.
Our policy should be: produce it where you plan to sell it, for our corporations and any foreigners who want to sell in the US market. And fine for US companies to produce in Asia what they plan to sell in Asia.