Comment by ninetyninenine

Yeah China has only ever really been a major player for about 3 decades. In a third of a century it has Actually SHRUNK American manufacturing to the point where there was genuine knowledge loss. It was cheaper to manufacture things in China so we used China, and now America doesn't even have the capacity to manufacture anything on the scale of China.

>just its share of GDP has fallen as other sectors have grown faster

I think this is inn-accurate. You're looking at a century of data but China only took 1 decade to overtake the US. We're now three decades in and the overall decline of American manufacturing is pretty evident.