Source: EconLog
by Scott Sumner
“It is important to recall that China has more than 4 times America’s population. Thus in per capita terms, American manufacturing output is more than two and a half times larger than that of China. Indeed in per capita terms the US leads every single country on that list, except for Germany (which has 1/4th our population). We even lead countries like Japan and South Korea in per capita manufacturing output, despite their impressive export sectors. I suspect that people underestimate American manufacturing because it is a relative low share of GDP. But that doesn’t reflect that fact that our manufacturing sector is doing poorly — it isn’t — rather that our other sectors are so productive that ou[r] total GDP per capita greatly exceeds that of almost all other countries.” (05/21/25)
https://www.econlib.org/america-is-a-manufacturing-powerhouse/