In the hey-day of manufacturing things like shoes and clothing in the US, these things weren't considered "good" jobs. You can easily find numerous articles in

In the hey-day of manufacturing things like shoes and clothing in the US, these things weren't considered "good" jobs. You can easily find numerous articles in national magazines from the period decrying them as dangerous, monotonous, and otherwise awful. You can still buy a $600 pair of boots or derbys from Alden of New England (I have a pair) or Viberg. But these are niche products within a niche. If you're talking about high end manufacturing like cars, planes, specialized steel or similar we still do tons of that in the US. In inflation adjusted dollar amounts we produce more than ever, it just doesn't take very many people to do those things anymore. Robots do most of the jobs people used to do in that kind of manufacturing. Ship building has been killed largely by the low cost of over land transit since the highway system was built and government protectionism vis-a-vis the Jones act which allowed ship builders in the US to become uncompetitive. But realistically we never had a special advantage in ship building, beyond build a bunch of naval vessels really quickly. > I mean, can a country as large as the US be really competitive without manufacturing? We do manufacture a lot of things, just very few people work in manufacturing. We're also a world leader in agriculture. Services are fine, and very lucrative. One of our chief exports is education, which is a service.