No nation can maintain prosperity without manufacturing high value added goods.
If you lose this capacity - the capacity to make specialized, technologically intense, expensive, and highly desired products (think aircraft, optics, medical instruments, precision machine tools, microprocessors and specialized chemicals) - you will ultimately devolve into a service based, second rate economic power.
Doctor, attorneys, financial advisors, accountants, investment bankers - all depend on the wealth created by high tech manufacturing.
See how many people will be able to afford medical care without employee provided health insurance to subsidize the costs of treatment, surgery, medications and diagnostic tests.
But, alas, that's the road the elite in the U.S. have put us on.
Every man for himself!