You cannot replicate the situation where the US was the workshop of the world at a time when other major industrial powers had been smashed by war...unless you

You cannot replicate the situation where the US was the workshop of the world at a time when other major industrial powers had been smashed by war...unless you try to smash them or encourage them to have a war.... Other countries develop and need less of the basic products that they can begin to make for themselves, they create trade blocs where they can begin to achieve scale greater than the US or they simply are bigger anyhow. If the US can substitute imports then so can they. IMO the US has ridden the wave because that was the only sensible thing to do and it has stayed rich as a result. Adjustments may be needed - it's not safe to not be able to make fairly modern chips - but the whole world will get poorer if one splits it up and prevents scaling. What to do now...well....