While I agree the petrodollar is a big deal, and it does afford us a lot of extra leeway in monetary policy, we can't forget that the US is still an economic powerhouse in many, many different industries. And the power of singularly focused economies like Saudi Arabia is waning.
The shallow reporting is that manufacturing is gone, but the reality is, we have higher manufacturing output than ever. (The fewer jobs needed for higher output is a different story.) We have an enormous lead in software. Intel and Qualcomm are the two biggest semiconductor companies. We have the largest oil and natural gas reserves, much of which is still untapped. A large share of world media entertainment is here. The US pharmaceutical industry accounts for almost half of the world output. World banking and finance is huge. Real estate market is enormous and highly desirable to outside investment. And this is for a country with less than 5% of the world's population.
And that's just some of the big stuff that the US leads the way in. There are so many other industries that the US is still a global player in. What I'm getting at is the the breadth and depth of the U.S. economy is so large that it is hard to comprehend and I don't think the failure of any one industry will be enough to produce significant hardship for the US. Nor does the economy need to rely on the petrodollar for protection in the long term.