Manufacturing is the goose that laid the golden egg. Don't kill the goose!
Manufacturing creates national wealth by taking goods of lower value, adding knowledge and labor, and creating something of higher value. This is true wealth creation. Other ways of creating national wealth are mining and farming for the same reasons. This national wealth circulates through the economy and keeps it going.
Most occupations do not create wealth since they just simply pass money from one American to another. Service industries and government jobs do not increase national wealth. The small percentage of Americans that manufacture, farm, and mine are the driving force of our economy. Politicians often refer to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is the sum of all goods and services produced. The GDP calculations erroneously assumes that selling $100 of insurance has the same economic impact on the country as manufacturing $100 of goods.
Importing decreases national wealth because money leaves our shores and material goods, with a limited life span, enter our country. Exporting goods or services increases national wealth because money enters the country and our economy.
In other words, manufacturing is the goose that laid the golden egg. Don't kill it. Manufacturing, mining, and farming brought the United States from a poor country with a small population 200 years ago to a wealthy country with a large population now. Germany and Japan were bombed civilizations with no infrastructure and a depleted population of working age males just sixty years ago after World War II. They became wealthy in just a two or three decades by manufacturing and exporting. No country has ever imported themselves into prosperity.
The American standard of living is being propped up by massive, record breaking government borrowing. All this debt will have to be paid in the future. The lack of manufacturing and wealth creation in our country is one of the root causes of our huge national debt.