The point is that our national economy is intimately linked to the larger world economy, and that forced adjustments such as tariffs and sanctions hurt us as much as they help us. We have seen in this election that many Americans want jobs to come back to America; but as Will points out, often this costs workers, and the US economy in general, more than it saves us in jobs. We can't return to the assembly line labor intensive jobs without a Luddite revolution, destroying modern assembly machines, nor would we want to, given that those process efficiency gains have made consumer products affordable to almost everyone. The era of the laborers' assembly lines, pioneered by Eli Whitney and brought to a modern efficiency by Henry Ford, are the past. The future is robotic assembly and CAD/CAM. Those who want manual work may join one of the artisanal occupations and sell their goods on Etsy,com, or get some more training in health care, law enforcement, or many other service sectors.