> What particular "competitive advantage" does the US have in "energy production"? Incredible reserves of natural gas and oil to start with. Massive solar and

> What particular "competitive advantage" does the US have in "energy production"? Incredible reserves of natural gas and oil to start with. Massive solar and wind potential as well, way beyond other highly-populated parts of the world. A huge, skilled population capable of designing and building indigenous nuclear reactors, and the capital reserves to fund and build basically whatever is needed. > Do we employ so many such workers, that there are none left over for any sort of manufacturing? Money going into building inefficient factories is money not spent educating software engineers, building solar farms, or. developing new gas fracking technologies. Regardless of it being public or private capital. It's not that there aren't enough workers, it's that effort spent in one way is necessarily effort not spent in another. Slightly reducing economic efficiency may well be worth it if the result is social stability, and almost definitely to prepare for an eventual war or crisis. But we shouldn't pretend like there's no trade-off here. That's how we got into this free-trade deindustrialised problem in the first place.