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yes, back in the old days they used to measure an economy by tons shipped. It doesn't apply anymore due to higher value things being lighter, and tracking air-shipments would be a problem.

However, it does underlie a point - tracking the value of shipments by a currency value can easily obscure important facts.

Then that shows that the US industrial output is bigger. That's why Germany makes $50,000 cars and Mexico makes $15,000 ones

How else could you possibly compare them?

Purchasing power parity in local currency?

You didn't answer ars' question, you simply deferred the answer to whoever is defining PPP.

You could compare them in many ways, and $$$ is possibly the best single measure. But the OP article is uncritically self-congratulatory, which is not altogether appropriate given that same products of equal quality do cost a lot less if made in China.

Yeah, it's very non-obvious to the layman that they're talking about value rather than production.