[central_va]

After re-reading your insipid post you must think the core problem is we don’t have enough cheap skilled labor. The problem as you see it is we are not a third world nation with a first world military( like the USSR). Get this: there is no going back the Republican brand is now the labor party/middle class party. No going back.

[Rockingham]

You seem to misunderstand my point and line of reasoning, which are that too much federal spending and debt are the fundamental problem. We are burdened with a predatory political class that cannot stop reckless over spending, usually for the sake of their donor class.

To keep the spending going, we have a strong dollar policy that permits the US to continue (for a time) to finance our out of control public deficits. Yet that strong dollar policy also makes foreign goods cheaper and US goods more expensive, which has helped lead to the decline of American manufacturing.

Yes, we can impose import barriers to support American manufacturing, but if the dollar remains relatively over-valued, all that accomplishes is import substitution at the margins without regaining America's export markets.

Regaining America's export markets requires constraint of wasteful federal spending, a weaker dollar, lower US interest rates, and forcing open foreign markets to American goods. That combination would expand the American industrial base and keep wages high. Otherwise, as has happened for decades, our industrial base will continue to decline.

Of course, domestic policy factors and issues have also hurt American manufacturing: over regulation and bad regulation, especially the green agenda; union work rules that are often so embarrassingly bad that companies are forbidden by their union contracts to make them public; unfavorable federal income tax rates and terms; and bad corporate management. I'll leave these unexplored for now.