"Machinery" (not including airplanes) is still one of the largest exports of the US. The list [1] of exports by size is:
Mineral fuels including oil: US$378.6 billion
Machinery including computers: $229.6 billion
Electrical machinery, equipment: $197.7 billion
Vehicles: $134.9 billion
Aircraft, spacecraft: $102.8 billion
Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $99.1 billion
Gems, precious metals: $92.5 billion
Pharmaceuticals: $83.5 billion
So the top 3 "non-aircraft" machinery categories are still exported at 5x the amount of aerospace. It seems like people [2] are still interested in the stuff the US manufactures.
Yes but Asia dominates the "building" category overall by a massive margin.
It's just true.
Pharmaceuticals, medical and gems are off topic.
I'm sure there's other small niches the US dominates in. But overall what I said is the objective truth no matter how much you desire it to be not true.
If Asia doesn't dominate a niche yet they are aggressively on track to dominate in the near future.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term. If you mean building infrastructure, that's true, but also partly because the US invested heavily in the same type of infrastructure a generation or two prior. I would disagree with the pharmaceuticals because that is a manufacturing-intensive industry.
Throwing out gems (because that probably isn't a good case, like you said), it still amounts to over $1.2 trillion in exports. I'm sure other countries would love that kind of "niche" business.
Gems isn't good also because it's mostly aesthetic. No intrinsic utility other then being rare and pretty. You won't actually "improve" society with gems. It's hard to distill this in technical terms but I hope you're able to understand without the need to get pedantic.
Gemstones therefore are more of a reflection of countries with the ability to purchase the gemstones as an import and less of a reflection of the country actually exporting the gemstones. Right? If a country exports a huge amount of gemstones it means a lot of external countries have an abundance of economic output such that they can purchase frivolous goods that ultimately don't contribute much to the economy. North Korea doesn't purchase gemstones but maybe a rich country would. And the place where diamonds are mined are mostly from some poor countries in Africa.
>Can you elaborate on what you mean by "building"? It's a nebulous term.
Manufacturing and infrastructure I believe are the two words that cover it best off the top of my head but it's unnecessary to specify this to the level of pedantic detail you're going for here. I think those two terms are clear enough.
I think we both know, in general the direction China/Asia is going and where they're completely dominating the US. It's at a general tipping point now. Where one can say they're better than the US overall in the general area of infrastructure/manufacturing. Manufacturing is pretty broad and general and that's the right word to use because broadly and generally Asia is just ahead of the US in this matter.
The problem with these things is that even though it's obvious people still like to debate pedantic details in some vain attempt to use the pedantic details to obscure the obvious truth or even shift the advantage in the favor of the US. Why else would you bring up gemstones and pharmaceuticals?
I don't think I need to elaborate as you requested. You know what I'm talking about and deep down you most likely agree. The trouble here is less about getting at the most accurate truth and more about the inability to accept the truth.
It's a little strange that you dug your heels in on the gemstones because I was trying to be gracious and steelmanning your point by conceding that portion. But since you brought it up again, I'll explain why I think it's wrong. Gems are not just "mostly aesthetic". 80% or so of diamonds are used in industrial purposes, ie manufacturing. So if you concede that manufacturing is a good measure, by extension so are gems. The same holds for many other gems. E.g., rubies are used in lasers, continuous measuring machines (which are heavily used in aerospace) etc. Even if that wasn't the case, your take is overly utilitarian IMO. Under your logic, any type of art (movies, music, visual art) are worthless as exports because they are more aesthetic than functional. I don't think I want to live in a society that de-prioritizes art to that degree.
The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point. Asking for clarification is not being pedantic any more than hiding behind ambiguous terms makes for a convincing argument. I'm not, for one, saying the US manufactures more than Asia. But I'm also not in agreement that it's languishing, save for a single industry like aerospace. If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy. You wrote a lot of words but didn't contribute much to the argument other than another vague diatribe when asked for a finer point, and that's often indicative of not having a thorough understanding.
>It's a little strange that you dug your heels in on the gemstones because I was trying to be gracious and steelmanning your point by conceding that portion.
It's False gracious-ism lol. You obviously believe you can win the argument without that so you gave it up. It was a deceptive gesture. Anyway. I'm not in this to win. I'm in it because I, in totality believe I'm right. So what does it matter if I use gemstones given that you already conceded that point? And like I said it was a false concession. You pretended to concede that point and I correctly responded as if you didn't concede.
>The rest of your post seems like a deflection because you can't seem to adequately illuminate your point.
I can't adequately illuminate my point. I concede to that. The statement "Asia is superior to the US in manufacturing and infrastructure" is a statement with so many fuzzy words I can't satisfy your pedantry. What is "manufacturing"? What is "superiority"? What is "Asia"? Am I referring to North Korea?
There is no study, no science on the face of this earth that can prove either side of this debate correct.
The most we can do is throw a bunch of random facts and tidbits at each other and never ultimately agree. Take your side foray into gemstones... Does diamonds represent all of gemstones? Also what about the proportional value of artificial diamonds vs. Mined diamonds? What about the amount of value involved in beauty vs. Manufacturing? You failed to acknowledge here that diamonds used in manufacturing are mostly manufactured themselves. How much of manufacturing does gemstones represent? We could dive deep into this useless pedantic branch of the debate and ultimately go nowhere.
But despite all of this, we both know what gemstones usually refers to a mined rock for beauty purposes. That was the industry referred to through the colloquial usage of the term gemstones. But there's an underlying strategy here where you can subtly switch definitions and use the pedantic definition without the other party realizing it. Anyway let's move off of gemstones like you originally conceded.
I value the human ability to know things and communicate vague and general concepts and things without fuzzy boundaries without the need to reference data or research. If you don't have the intellectual ability to do this then the only logical conclusion for you is to not even engage in this debate or any debate for that matter because no definitive conclusion is possible for most things of this nature.
I also concede that despite all of this fuzziness you are smart enough to know what I'm talking about and deep down you know I'm right.
Call it diatribe or whatever you want. The outcome of this conversation had a predictable end of going to a pedantic nowhere. I just took it to a different end here.
>If you look at the actual data, there is still a fairly robust manufacturing base in America, especially for a service-oriented economy.
So? You can make this statement and the following can still be true: Asia is far superior to the US when it comes to manufacturing and infrastructure.
Additionally the following statement can still be true: the past several decades American manufacturing and infrastructure has been in decline.
And this as well: America does not have the will or the manufacturing capability to replace it's energy infrastructure with nuclear.
Do we need to get into a overly detailed debate about this or is it just self evident that these statements are true? I think it's self evident. Again it's not really matter of truth, but more about accepting the truth.
I know what you mean but it's not that clear cut. Rockets? USA. Phones? Assembled in Asia but running iOS or Android. Electric cars? Tesla's still ahead. A lot of the move to China was a choice to have them do the work because they quoted cheaper, which is not irreversible.
It is clear. First of all you brought up Elon. That guy is an anomaly. If it wasn't for him both industries he's responsible for pushing forward would have been viciously surpassed ages ago.
Additionally byd will be surpassing Tesla soon. It's projected to in less than a year.
As for phones, the entire stack is owned by Asia. Software is the only thing we have left and most of it is open source.
Pretty clear cut from your examples. But also clear cut from common sense.
I suggest you find other examples to help detract from the obvious generality. Look into Tiny niches like precision and highly advanced bespoke manufacturing where the US still holds a shakey lead. These areas may help you construct an argument that looks effective but obviously isn't.
China is a paper tiger. It is amazing the credit the media gives them, but no surprise given the medias purpose is to create narratives rather than put light on truth. If China were as dominant as the media alleges Taiwan would have been invaded decades ago. The reality is big mighty China has one aircraft carrier that entered service just 5 years ago, and another one that is a renovated old soviet carrier. The vast bulk of their air force is a half century behind ours. Most other industries are similarly toothless when you dig into how they are actually comprised beyond their raw numbers.
I'm not talking about China alone. I'm talking about Asia. Which is China + Taiwan + Korea + Japan + Singapore, plus every major asian country.
Additionally the rivalry between the US and China is off topic I'm not talking about that.
My statement is, Asia is superior to the US in terms of Manufacturing/infrastructure. I can add more to that as well. In terms of ICs, Asia also dominates. The US is behind Asia on all three of these fronts. As a general statement this is still true. You didn't invalidate anything with your off topic comment here.
That being said, the united states is the dominant spender in terms of defense. They are number one on this front and in terms of technology. I don't think the world has ever seen a military industrial complex as massive and as advanced as the one the US has built. What you say here is true and it's major. It's not included in "manufacturing" but it's intimately connected and thus worth mentioning.
Why do you compare an entire continent to one country and also not count one of that country’s largest manufacturing cost centers as part of its manufacturing? Seems like cherry-picking.
Because at one point in time the US played the dominant role here, with output comparable to entire continents. Now with globalization that dominance has shifted to Asia.
So in essence if there is a place that will convert to majority nuclear power it's most likely going to be Asia that still has the capability to do this. I don't think it's likely for the US.
US still has the capability for sure. Look at this environment in this country. Most every consumer good produced imported here without having to bear the externalities of local manufacturing or resource extraction like localized pollution and diminished health outcomes. Most money is kept or invested here. Most of the world is trying to immigrate here. Realistically if push came to shove this is exactly where you’d expect a massive buildout to occur. Supply of materials is solved with massive globalized trade networks oriented towards ports in NY and CA. Supply of money is solved from both private investors and also the strings the federal reserve can uniquely pull. Supply of labor is also solved considering how much low skilled labor is available in central and south America that is able to be drawn upon in probably a years time or much less if such job opportunities present themselves. There is also a lot of low skilled labor in this country already kept idle, working service jobs like cashiers in towns that have little other work but such service jobs, in effect the town exists and demands labor yet produces nothing, and these sorts of places were ripe for building out defense industries in record time in the 1940s. We import skilled labor and knowledge workers from most other countries who struggle to offer them lifelong work locally.
To be specific it's airplane engines, 5th gen turbofan engines. China started building COMAC airplanes too, probably with questionable maintenance and serviceability story, that they can push with govt airlines. They are still having trouble with modern turbofan engines though.
Except for airplanes that's one of the few things we still do better.
My overall point is I highly doubt nuclear powerplants will be built here in any major way. Will it happen in Asia? Far more likely.