You can thank unions and other anti-free market groups/voters for that. If you were to graph the decline of our manufacturing industries, you would see it directly correlates with the size of government (unions count in the government size equation).
If we could cut government by 60 to 75%, you would see an automatic increase in manufacturing as the American dollar adjusted and American companies were able to compete in the global economy. There are other factors obviously, but those are the main destructive forces.
Also, we need a much more aggressive trade policy imho
