>>Think about the implications of a manufacturing base of that magnitude that while stewing over emails and porn stars.

A year ago? I agreed with you, here on UT. China's model seems to be to establish resource or IP monopoly. They go after control of the world's rare earths after which manufacture in China makes sense if you need rare earths. Government subsidy helps establish monopoly by low pricing, e.g. in car batteries, before the price creeps back up to where it was except now they're all made in Chinese controlled factories. In the 3rd World China plays a long game, locking up mining and other resources to help build a hegemony over time- as you note, while the US stews over emails and porn stars. The resulting huge surpluses are thrown back into the effort including developing intellectual property quickly, as well as military might that doesn't yet match the US, but soon will. It's a grand strategy that allows them to flex their military muscles in ever-widening circles with nobody except the US equipped to dissent, and work tirelessly to re-establish the middle kingdom as the premier nation it was in history.

But now, like Keynes, I change my mind. ;-) Truth is that manufacturing increasingly is robotic, with robot cost far less determinant than labour over where manufacturing makes best economic sense.

With the size of the US market and recent tax cuts, IMHO it's no longer financially advantageous to put the robots outside the US where production can be subject to all sorts of uncertainty, delay and cost getting it safely to the US when it's needed.

The other quiet effect just being felt, is that while a lot of raw manufacturing moved to China, a lot of the smarts stayed centered in first world firms in the US and elsewhere. If robotics is going to be led locally, the shoe now is on the other foot.

My expectation is that local manufacture is going to become popular again all over the first world, ironically without the jobs people currently boast about whenever a factory is announced.

When the day comes that robots can build more of themselves to manufacture whatever the human overlords desire, that's the end of the economy as we know it too. The speed at which things are moving: might even happen in our lifetimes, Bill.