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It's a well founded myth based on an extremely high percentage of consumer goods produced overseas.

I can't find hard data on this, but anecdotally it's very hard to find things made in the US unless it's a high end store. Chinese manufacturing filled the burst in consumer demand for budget-level products...

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True, but that's a relatively small part of the economy to begin with. We make most of the heavy plant in the world, so we're essentially building the factories China uses to make the plastic crap we buy.

How might one know the truth about this, what could I read?

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that German machinery exports are higher than those of the US. Couldn't find numbers but remember that Germany was #1 in that segment for quite some time, would be surprised if the US is now leading.

> anecdotally it's very hard to find things made in the US unless it's a high end store

manufacturing output is measured in dollars, not 'amount of stuff' except in very specific cases. producing fewer but more expensive high end goods (like what the US makes) can still result in more output.

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