Look to Post #24.
I challenge you to take the same test.
You are confusing exports with manufactured items. Unless you are going to buy a Boeing jet or an F-18, or a hedge fund, there is little to buy with a Made in the USA label. Corn and soybeans and lumber and Alaska oil (a lot goes overseas) don’t come out of factories.
And even farm production is going south, literally. Your lettuce comes from Mexico, your pineapples from Central America, your apple juice (almost ALL of it) from China, as well as your wheat gluten - ask any cat).
Oh - also north - your movies and TV shows and cars are made in Canada.
In a few years the only jobs in America, outside the government, politics, and the media, will be selling stuff to each other. And we’re not even educated enough to make change.
And what the hell was that opening paragraph all about?
No I'm not. Did you actually read my post?
I said that our manufacturing industry was struggling.
You were the one that made the comment that "There is no American manufacturing or exporting left.", and I was pointing out the flaws in that statement.
It's definitely true that most mass produced goods are produced where labor is cheaper than in the US.
Unless you are going to buy a Boeing jet or an F-18, or a hedge fund, there is little to buy with a Made in the USA label.
Ever buy a house? How about a car. Obviously not all the parts that go into either are made in America, maybe less than 50%, but much of it is made in America.
In that list of items in post 24, where where those clothes designed? What about the toy?
Where was the intellectual property that went into that television and digital camera developed? Who do you think makes more money from those, the company that designs and develops those products and the components that go in them, or the company that assembles the parts?
If a product is designed in the US, using us technologies, and then that product is then manufactured under license in China, it's is considered made in China, despite the fact that the vast majority of the value of that product was produced in the United States, and that most of the earnings from the sale of that products will go to US companies.
The made in wherever sticker represents only the value of that product resulting from assembling it from it's components, and as technology advances that is less and less of the overall value of products.
Manufacturing is a small part of our economy, but as long as manufacturing represents a small part of the value of products that are produced, that doesn't have a lot of bearing on the strength of our economy.
The fact that manufacturing remains a main focus of the political debate regarding the economy is a testament to power of organized labor, which represents a small special interest group among American workers.
Manufacturing of most products requires little skill these days. Most (not all) of the tasks that required truly skilled trades have been automated.
If we want to bring manufacturing back to the US we have two choices. We can have Americans do manufacturing jobs at true market rates, which would mean those workers living in poverty, or we can institute heavy protectionism.
Protectionism would greatly increase the price everyone pays for goods so that a small portion of the workforce could make good wages doing their jobs. Strong protectionism is unfair to the majority, and overall it is bad for the economy. You can justify protectionism to some extent because of national security implications of not being able to produce goods domestically, but it isn't justified economically.