You know, there was once a time when things were manufactured in Japan because it was cheap. But the Japanese showed they could get smart quicker than the US could get cheaper, and that's why Japanese cars, cameras, watches, etc dominate the US market now. Robotics didn't help... The Japanese got better than the US at that too.

The ONLY thing that will stop China eating the USs lunch will be if its political class decide its merchant class are getting too powerful (as happened in 1425, when owning a ship with more than one mast was made a capital crime).