Robert C. O’Brien
For over seventy-five years, American leadership has brought an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and stability across the globe. When looking back on these decades, many point to our military strength, our great economic dynamism, and our technological innovations as the sources of America’s national power. These observations are true, but they miss what underpins these pillars.
Military, economic, and technological prowess are not generated out of nothing. They come from something deeper, something that we are at risk of losing: our industrial capacity. U.S. industrialization in the twentieth century is what enabled such a colossal rise in the military, economic, and technological spheres. Just after World War II, the United States made up half of the global GDP, and over a quarter of the U.S. GDP was from the manufacturing sector at the time.
Much has changed since our post-war industrial boom. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s manufacturing superpower, accounting for almost 29 percent of global manufacturing output, while the United States lags at just under 17 percent. America’s manufacturing decline is a consequence of decades of outsourcing our capacity. We naively believed that if we ceded our industrial capabilities to China, that nation would democratize and become more like us. American politicians from both parties were wrong to assume this outcome.
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