The United States is still a manufacturing powerhouse. Said the United States manufacturing decline, in fact, is not accurate. The current annual output value of the U.S. manufacturing industry is not as high as China's, but the U.S. is still the second highest manufacturing output value in the world, second only to China.
Saying that the U.S. manufacturing sector is in decline should mean that the proportion of manufacturing output in the U.S. economy has declined. As the United States in recent decades, the United States vigorously develop the service sector, financial and entertainment industries, and so on, compared with the first half of the twentieth century, the United States manufacturing output in the total economic output in the proportion of the real decline.
At the same time, the United States gave up a lot of low-end manufacturing industries, such as manufacturing clothes, shoes and other clothing manufacturing industry, manufacturing TVs, refrigerators and washing machines and other home appliances manufacturing industry, etc., the United States feel that these manufacturing industries belong to the labor-intensive industries, the output of the low value-added, earn too little money, so do not engage in, left to other countries such as China to engage in, and its own vigorously develop aerospace, semiconductors, military It has been developing high-end manufacturing industries such as aviation, semiconductors, and military industry, because these high-end manufacturing industries are more profitable.
So there is this phenomenon: China produces hundreds of millions of pairs of socks in exchange for a Boeing airplane in the United States. This is the result of different positions in the global industrial chain.
However, in recent years, the United States has found that focusing only on the development of high-end manufacturing industry will also have some negative impacts. For example, high-end manufacturing is technology-intensive and requires less labor, so it cannot effectively increase employment. At the same time, the steel industry and the coal industry and other low-end manufacturing industry due to the lack of development, resulting in many of these areas of unemployment, the economy of some states and counties have been seriously affected, resulting in the so-called rust belt. These unemployed workers in the rust belt are living in hardship and have created a lot of discontent. Trump capitalized on this accurately in the 2016 election, coming up with demagogic slogans such as developing America's manufacturing sector to woo voters in these places, which played a big role in his eventual victory.
Also, many medical supplies, which are part of the low-end manufacturing sector, were underproduced, and as a result, when the new crown epidemic hit, the US found itself severely short of medical supplies.
As a result, the U.S. is now also adjusting its policies to put more resources into local manufacturing.
But capital is profit-driven. If the low-end manufacturing industry is not profitable, not many people in the U.S. are willing to engage in, the government's various preferential policies and subsidies can provide a temporary incentive, but I am afraid that it is not a permanent solution. Therefore, these adjustments in the United States should not be able to shake the status of China's first manufacturing power.