You don't get cheap products in a country where workers aren't cheap.
This isn't an issue of "the US cannot manufacture their own shoes", it's an issue of "the US customers have gotten used to paying prices that are too low to be achievable in humane conditions".
Shoes would become more expensive once you have to pay the workers, but there will still be enough shoes for everyone.
> Even kids want to be influencers, not assembly line workers (and we have to import those too).
Not every kid who wants to be an astronaut becomes an astronaut.
> we used to be a former socialist country that produced everything, from cars to computers, tvs, etc....
The west can and will easily reenter these markets once it becomes profitable or necessary to do so.
Of course this process would be costly and would require quite a few people to change careers, but its far from infeasible
The manufacturer of vehicles, airplanes, factory automation equipment, high end weapons, medical equipment, and a huge array of high end stuff that requires real expertise and is easily transferable to making forks, is still quite well alive in the US and there are few parallels on earth other than in Europe.
Economic specialization has meant the western countries specialized in extremely high end manufacturing and the engineering and management of low end manufacturing globally. In a crisis the turn around to bring it home would be breathtaking.
Now everyone wants to go to college, many to study something where there are literally no real jobs (with added benefit) available (ancient greek, comparative literature, sociology, etc.), and then end up in the public sector, where it doesn't matter if you studied electrical engineering or latin language, all college diplomas are worth the same.
I mean sure, everybody wants to be a superhero, etc. (or pewdiepie-sized influencer for the more younger generations), but once you're 14yo, ending elementary school, you have to choose your next level of education (general gymnasium, one of the technical highschools, economics, construction, cosmetics, etc.), and back then a lot more people chose their actual future careers at that moment than now, where parents push them to gymnasiums, colleges, where some fail (and some somehow succeed), and you then have baristas and warehouse workers with masters degrees and not enough electricians, construction yard workers, factory workers, etc. (electricians etc. are especially bad, because you actually need a high school diploma (or similarly hard alternatives) to do the job).
Polar sailors or jet pilots work as well.
American manufacturing exceeds at anything energy intensive or which can be automated. We suck at manual tooling, as Cooke points out.
That applies to, in general, anything big. Big production runs. Big in mass. We’re good at big.
Taiwan. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, though most of their factories are in China and their founder is a notorious CCP collaborationist.
High end custom stuff, sure... but at the end of the day, you need cheap shoes for millions of people to wear every day, and not a lot of those are made in US.
I live in a small eu country and here, the chinese (hisense) bought one of our companies, just to be able to do the final assembly stage of electronics, to stick the "made in eu" sticker on.. everything else is done elswehere, including that companies original products. And we used to be a former socialist country that produced everything, from cars to computers, tvs, etc.... now we don't have enough basic electricians and plumbers for household work, before even thinking about building any kind of massive production facilities. Even kids want to be influencers, not assembly line workers (and we have to import those too).