Interestingly, despite not having large, obvious, centralized manufacturing hubs, the US is not far behind China in overall manufacturing output, despite putting far less effort into it.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/global-manufacturing-scor...

US is at 18% of global manufacturing vs China's 20%, but the US only gets 12% of it's overall GDP from manufacturing compared to China's 27%, and with about half the percentage of it's workforce (with a much smaller workforce).

Only if you measure manufacturing in dollars, which is then artificially inflated by the military sector.

If the US had to manufacture the products that are currently manufactured in China, the amount of dollars generated would be lower, or the share of people employed in manufacturing would explode. GDP would of course decrease.