this image contradicts everything I've maybe ever heard about "American manufacturing"'s decline. Not saying the image is wrong, it's just impressive how much one segment of industry has been politicized.
That's why it's so politicized. Manufacturing is about 12% of GDP. That 12% used to go to a lot of people. Now it goes to the few people who own all the factories and the robots inside them.
It's both yes or no for USA:
1. Fever businesses at all in the sector
2. USA has an extremely strong slant towards expensive capital goods, in very entrenchable industries: aerospace, defence, weapons, medical, industrial vehicles, and machinery
3. All of the above is increasingly made with imported, off the shelf parts
4. USA has "industrial" companies who manage to report giant manufacturing outputs in accounting statements, but known to not have a single running manufacturing plant.
Job losses in manufacturing have sent millions of people from middle class to poverty in the span of a single generation.
Manufacturing is also directly tied to national security, regardless of how many choose to ignore this.
imo it hasn't been politicized enough.
It is mostly due to outsourcing the labor-intensive parts to cheaper labor markets.
The hypothetical robots are people working elsewhere.