All manufacturing requires is a decent infrastructure, reasonably stable political and legal system, and a workforce willing to work cheaply enough. Trying to compete against China - and the rest of the world - on those terms for today's market, rather than doing everything in its power to keep its lead and define tomorrow's markets, is the biggest mistake the US could make.
Manufacturing is a relatively low skilled job - the expectation that manufacturing = middle class made sense 50 years ago, but not today.
Edit: a lot of my thinking on this issue is colored by the book The World is Flat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat). It's a complex issue, and I'm definitely open to new ways of looking at it.
It will be your job to build and maintain these robots.
I have no problem having China make goods for us. Manufacturing is usually a dirty process and the jobs can be relatively low paying.
Then that's design and engineering, and not strictly manufacturing. Which is what I'm arguing for.
And the question stands, what to do with those workers? Move them to the facility that builds the robots that displaced them, in a loop?
That said, I do not oppose the replacement of workers with robots in any way, as that would be artificially trying to stop the progress of mankind. But what happens to the workers is a serious issue. What are all the people from the closed American car factories doing?
There are no guarantees and you have to compete. If you're going to have to pick your battles, pick one that's worth winning. If the US became a nation of engineers and designers and businessmen, that would do more to support a middle class and a high quality of life than if the US went back to being a nation of factory workers and coal miners. And it turns out the US has a lot of things--a vast, high-quality higher education system, a relatively free market, a culture amenable to entrepreneurship--that give us competitive advantages in these fields. What competitive advantage do we have in manufacturing?
Maybe the one thing holding us back is a lack of appreciation for great design. Apple is truly an outlier in that respect.
We can guarantee that we stay on top of the vertical stack by continuing to innovate by designing and commercializing new products. This is what Joseph A. Schumpeter called creative destruction.
How can we stay ahead of other countries in this endeavor? I do not know. Economic theory tells us that national boarders and countries have no significance in economic growth. If we have open countries that allow trade and the movement of capital all countries and people should benefit from new innovation regardless of whether it is made in the USA or in Pakistan. This question was answered nearly 200 years ago by David Ricardo and others.
Obviously countries are not completely open to trade, however the trend is toward higher levels of international openness. One need only look at the succes of Singapore. Others will follow slowly.
The us vs. them mentality will not get us to the land of milk and honey.
I think you've been misinformed:
http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2006/02/stop-worryi...