The real tragedy are those masquerading as Conservatives that assert that loss of manufacturing jobs is a natural progression in an evolving economy...
...while blatantly ignoring the politics that drive jobs overseas under the stated goal of equalizing global prosperity and calling that ‘free trade’...
My sense is that globalization drives this more than automation. The idea of cheap labor is what drives globalization, and automation is only an issue if the automation process is guaranteed to replace a human with a cost savings. So, it might not be as enticing a direction as some observers might think in some areas.
Only Pat Buchanan takes that view, and he has been repudiated three times by the American people, uninformed as they are.
You are correct on that one. There is no such thing as a "normal" evolution of an economy. It is not foreordained that more developed economies will abandon manufacturing.
In our case, the relative decline in manufacturing (relative -- not absolute -- manufacturing continues to grow in the US) is due to an overinflated dollar that makes foreign goods more affordable than domestic goods.
With a stable dollar and more benign government regulations, the increased capital generated by improved production processes would be reinvested in new lines of manufacturing. Instead, we've siphoned off capital to grow government and playing games with money has replaced investing in the production of tangible goods.