Is lack of Production a key factor in declining US credit rating?

I'm not an economist but I have a question that needs someone who knows economics.

In most years of the past ten if I recall Germany was at the top of the nations by Current Account surplus, with the United States at the bottom and the United Kingdom second or third from the bottom.

Is this difference traceable to Germany still doing manufacturing, and the US and UK having largely quit manufacturing?

(I realize I've ignored food and minerals production and focused on manufacturing production)

 

No, they cited rising public debt and political division making it unlikely any compromises are possible when they downgraded the US credit rating. The decline of manufacturing leveled off between 2000-2010.

Now I would love to see more manufacturing in the US because that provides the floor in a lot of communities' economies. I don't expect to see it return until there is parity between the cost of manufacturing and shipping overseas and the cost of manufacturing domestically.

 

Thank you for your reply, economics is definitely not my forte.

The first sentence appears to be their comments about the unlikeliness of getting improvements at the present time,
without mentioning the problems have been ongoing for a long time I understand.

And Manufacturing may have picked up between 2000 and 2010, but that was a particularly active time of war
even by U.S. standards, so I'm concerned that some of the output might have just been destroyed in wars overseas rather than
contributing to our trade balance.

 

Clinton has 300 plus trade deals and started the movement from being a manufacturing -based economy to a consumption-based economy that continues to this day. I don't think we will ever see robust manufacturing again in the US in our lifetime.

 

MFN status for Red China began in 1980, and Japan began its dumping in 1976. Reagan became the best President Japan ever had, after Ford and Carter opened the door to massive labor racketeering masquerading and ' free trade', the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people, and still beloved by both Parties' owners and financiers.

Ford and Walmart shipping themselves stuff from their factories overseas to themselves in the U.S. is not ' foreign trade', they're intra-comapny transfers.

 

If you're referring to trade balance, then very likely yes. In fact almost certainly.
I don't even know that you need statistics to prove it, since the fact is so obvious. Most anyone living in the U.K. or France would agree.

The real controversial question is why hasn't manufacturing left Germany, when it seems to have mostly disappeared in most other advanced countries.

Everyone in Europe agrees Germany has the most wealth and highest living standards in Europe (with the exception of the smaller much less populated Nordic countries further north, and maybe a few smaller states like Switzerland and Luxembourg, but they are not as significant economically).

 

Because they're not stupid and enslaved by bankers, and realize the need to keep high productivity jobs in their own country.