That is absolutely not the case in any way. The US is the most vibrant and productive economy in the world, the envy of every other country. China is literally trying to climb the economic ladder up to the type of hugely productive, high paying jobs that the US is. And somehow the US got tricked into thinking that the low paying, less productive manufacturing jobs are what we should be climbing down to.

It's true in some very important ways. Manufacturing employment is something like 15% of what it was fifty years ago. We only do manufacturing for things that require a lot of technology and a sophisticated skill set.

But not everyone in society is cut out to manufacture integrated circuits. It used to be that a person on the left half of the IQ bell curve could go out and get a job making brooms, or plumbing fixtures, or toys, or any number of things that are only manufactured in China now.