It's not an issue that the US has lost manufacturing, it's that we've lost what I'll call meta-manufacturing. We still do make things in the US. Medical devices, fighter aircraft, high charge batteries, semiconductor foundries, etc. Stuff at the top of the value-add food chain. The processes and meta-knowledge about processing developed in those industries trickles down to mass manufacturing -- that's what's been offshored.
The shift has happened that the meta-manufacturing methods -- the ability to do things that are unique and which nobody else can do has moved offshore as well. There are Chinese kanban-like production fabrics in some of the provinces that now form titanium in ways that we can't in the US in order to make smartphone shells. We benefit by having a never-ending supply of cheap high tech fetish objects, but the IP, or meta-IP rests elsewhere, and that 's the seat of value, I contend.
See Hagel and Brown for more on this
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