Except for the fact that we manufacture more today than at any other time in our history, I'm sure you're right and we don't make nuttin here no mo.
From WW2 to the 70s our government used protectionism to make sure the US didn't run a trade imbalance.
Nonsense. We run a current account deficit because we're a rich country. Our current account deficit increases the most when our economy is growing the fastest. If what you said had any credibility whatsoever, the chart I posted previously would look very different. It's impossible to plead doom when our economic growth has been increasing like that.
I've read plenty of economic text books and most are 90% lies.
LOL. Adam Smith was such an ignorant traitor!
Studying the actual process of how nations rise and fall serves me much better than reading lies and false predictions
If you had actually done the reading you claim to have done, you'd know that an economy built on protectionist policies suffers, as do their people. You'd also know that further empowering government control of the economy never ends well. Japan runs a huge trade surplus and employs an endless array of protectionist policies. For the past 25 years, however, they've been mired in a no growth/deflationary spiral. How is that possible? Yeah, let's be like them.
If you want to learn the truth go read the amazing rise of so many nations in recent years and their heavily protectionist policies.
It's just the opposite but that doesn't surprise me given your knowledge of the subject. You conveniently neglect to mention that government policy on taxes, regulation, unions and litigation has a much greater influence over economic growth than trade. But your myopia has you convinced freedom is the problem. Why you want to argue against freedom on a forum dedicated to freedom is a mystery.