Why is manufacturing so important? Why can't we let people do creative stuffs like making YT videos or making handcrafts?
That´s an interesting question, especially regarding the "reason" for this: the
trade deficit (which equalled overall
~ -45 USD billion per month in 2017, being a whopping
0.2% 4% of the GDP of 19390 USD billion in the
year 2017 - all that is, not China alone). It sounds much in absolute numbers, maybe the comparison is mathematically questionable, but if 100% of the GDP pays for a system,
0.2% 4% of that will probably not rebuild ´murica and pay for all the problems, walls or whatever. You could also re-frame the -45 USD billion trade deficit as: the imports are valuable, but the exports are not valuable enough, that could mean a few things internally need to be changed.
E.g. in 2019 global players move money in ways that might evade trade deficit calculations in the first place, by licensing costs, tax evasion, hollywood accounting and such.
Manufacturing or trading goods or the trade deficit between continents is obviously not the center of all commerce (
0.2% 4%!), there are still plenty of businesses that are not affected at all, like infrastructure (can´t economically ship your infrastructure, you´ll gonna need it in the future :-), i know there are exceptions, *hello Huawei 5G Ban discussion*), education, power generation, medicine, everything that does not get across the language barrier or must be local. All of these are magically not present in the discussion with MAGA folks.
There gotta be some human touch that machines can't do, and there are people willing to pay for it.
Machinists work like that as well, either small part counts or even high volume production thanks to CNC. Wages are usually the big factor, so people better do smart stuff very often or lower count for higher pay.
Is it heavily inflated? Yes. But as long as we have money to spend, we don't care.
Well, in a mining centered economy, the flow of physical matter, the ability to mine, refine and increase the aggregate net value is what counts, it also presents a limit to the speed of trades and value that can be gained or lost. In a consumer based economy that shifts more to the impression of value, time spent, time saved, experience made, access to information. In a finance based economy... the house is on fire, leave quick, there is no SI unit for currency. I predict China to use it´s wealth and increase the social and life standards, kind of evening out wages internationally in the very long run.
But excuse my sickening hypocrisy, i write this as i unpack some stuff that arrived in the mail today, from China. Spare soldering iron: 8.17 Euro, assortment of generic 630V caps (one off-hobby projects): 11.20 Euro, postage included.
Edit: whoops, 4% instead of 0.2%, thanks Marco