This analysis is just garbage.
“We consume a lot of goods therefore we are prosperous.”
Utter nonsense. I implore you to actually hang out in, not just visit, these places that got blown up so that some companies could make some basis points on their quarterly returns.
It’s also amazing that you’re saying that the “cultural” hangings on about the mid 20th century are something to be readjusted. Dude, these people are not going to become firmware engineers at night school. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting what was a normal family life at that time to exist in 2019. If your claim is that that is not possible, then declare what sacrifices are required. Did globalism make this impossible?
The US could compete with foreign countries on manufacturing, but not through human labour unless you want Americans to work 9/9/6 in hazardous conditions and under environmental degradation. The dematerialisation of the US economy has made it cleaner, more energy-efficient, less physically demanding, and richer, because it extracts value from its global IP, and it has given Chinese workers a step up the ladder to prosperity. If manufacturing is coming back its in the form of robots, and that does very little for displaced workers.
There is no reason for fatalism because the premise is all wrong that deindustrialisation is bad. It's not. The problem the US has is a cultural one where the vision of the Ford company man working the same job at the conveyor belt with a dog and car and a house in the suburbs hasn't been updated. Adjust the political system to compensate the segments of the population that lose out, find different ways to provide meaningful work, and we'll be better off, instead of making everyone worse off.