> What is so special about manufacturing?
That's a good question. The answer is that it drives productivity growth. Most of the economy does not increase in productivity at all. Your haircutter or waiter is not more productive than a haircutter or waiter in the 1800s. But they make much more per hour because of cost-disease as they attach themselves to industries where one hour of labor can produce exponentially more output. So you have 20% of the economy driving basically all of the economic growth and productivity gains, and the wage growth of everyone else is dependent on this 20% doing really well. Therefore some nations, like China, are willing to fight for those manufacturing industries, even as other nations, like the US, think they can maintain advanced status if their workforce consists of marketing executives and baristas. They think IP protections will keep those marketing executives earning huge bonuses and then that will support spending more on each espresso. Long term, this is not a viable plan, even if it works well in the short term.
> 14 million farm workers in 1910. 3 million today. Tragedy?
No, that's productivity gains. But we are still farming and producing that food. The equivalent would be if the US got out of the farming business and turned to designing genetically engineered seeds. Let all those other nations grow food, we will do the high value stuff and outsource the actual growing-of-things. Well, OK, until other nations decide to stop paying licensing fees or switch to their own designs. Then not being able to grow things would really hurt us. Same for not being able to make things and turning to just designing stuff.
When a nation loses their increasing returns to scale industries is when economic growth stops.