While in San Francisco, USA, enroute to Mexico City, I met up with some Filipino expat friends who told me that there is an incapacitatingly low number of consumer products made in the USA by workers who are American citizens. A survey run by a television station showed that in a typical suburban home in California, only one item was made in the USA from scratch– a lowly bed. The rest of the furniture, appliances, other home accessories, and motor vehicles were all imported, mostly from the People’s Republic of China. Not even the coffee maker was local. That has dire consequences for the present.
However, I did observe that the television home survey did not include construction materials, many of which might still be made in the USA. Although an alarming number of corporations have given up producing consumer items, the country is still the leading manufacturer of quality capital goods which are produced with acuity and are mostly for military use. Petrochemicals must also be a highly productive industry that covers a wide range of goods from cosmetics to pharmaceuticals.
A trip to COSTCO and similar places confirmed that the agricultural sector of the USA, unlike ours, still enjoys both zealous and jealous protection measures, despite Word Trade Organization agreements and the globalization phenomenon. There is an abundance of fruits, vegetables, dairy, wines, juices and an incredible variety of snacks, nibbles and munchies. Food processing and packaging are definitely the immutable consumer industries that the USA will defend to the last man/woman.
Moreover, who cares if they no longer make shoes, garments, textiles, refrigerators, hair clips, and costume jewelry? The USA provides the world with food and war material and that is what matters if it wants to remain the demiurge power of planet Earth.