[Plantagenet]

No country can successfully sell their exports into every country in the world in every industry. Successful economies (like the Germans) identify certain industries as "national champions" and the governments supports and helps those industries to try to obtain a technologically advanced and globally dominant position.

What are the US national champion industries that the USA should have a national policy of supporting? Which US industries can still hope to dominate on a global basis and export US products?

Here's my list of successes and potential successes:

Telecom (Juniper, Cisco)

Offshore Oil Drilling (Oceaneering, Cameron, Diamond, Atwater etc.)

Passenger Airplanes (Boeing)

Defense (General Dynamics, etc.)

Internet (Google, Facebook)

Computers, electronics (Microsoft, Apple)

Software and Business software (MS and various)

Electric cars (Fiskar)

GPS and other Space-related industries (Trimble, Garmin, Orbital Sciences)

Oil production and exploration technology and shale gas fracking

----------
FAILURES:

I think the US car industry to going to shrink and maybe die.
The US steel industry is essentially dead
US shipmaking is dead (except for the military)
US trainmaking is dead
The US screwed up by not promoting nuclear power as a national industry.
The Obama administration may kill off the Offshore Oil Drilling industry if they don't start letting it operate again
The oil majors are going to die unless they can migrate into natural gas majors or biofuel majors or something like that

[Plantagenet]

plutocracy
Advertising and propaganda
publishing and propaganda
outsourcing
pontificating and blathering
war

Good point.

The US is still dominant in:

Media (Hollywood, TV, CNN, WSJ, NYT, etc.).

[Ludi]

Showbiz aka Hollywood

[vtsnowedin]

Would you consider the production and export of corn and wheat valid?

[Plantagenet]

Would you consider the production and export of corn and wheat valid?

YES! Sorry---How did I not think of that one!

AGRIBUSINESS (Archer Daniels Midland, etc.)

[eXpat]

Money printing presses manufacturing?

[vtsnowedin]

Would you consider the production and export of corn and wheat valid?

YES! Sorry---How did I not think of that one!

AGRIBUSINESS (Archer Daniels Midland, etc.)

In future our ability to grow crops in the corn and grain belts of the US using fuel derived from coal may be our last great asset.......
Considering the implications of that..........
Excuse me I have something to do of great importance.

[jmnemonic]

Construction/Industrial/Farming Machinery - Caterpillar, John Deere, etc.
Porn - Various

[Oakley]

Prisons

[vtsnowedin]

Prisons

Sorry but I don't see any net profit in prisons. They are a cost of maintaining a civil law abiding society but a necessary evil not an asset.

[Blacksmith]

Economics:

Junk Bonds.
Enron.
Housing bubble.
Quantative Easing.
Hipper inflation.

[Keith_McClary]

Would you consider the production and export of corn and wheat valid?

I have one word for you, young man: SOYBEANS.

[Oakley]

Prisons

Sorry but I don't see any net profit in prisons. They are a cost of maintaining a civil law abiding society but a necessary evil not an asset.

Really! If net profit is the criteria then the entire economy of the former USSR was not part of the global economy, nor would much of farming in the US which can go for years being unprofitable absent government subsidies. However, my comment was directed at the horrible fact that the US is full of political prisoners, those who do not obey the politically motivated war of the US population, otherwise known as the war on drugs.

But even by your criteria, prisons are big business. Read this.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/

[KingM]

The US is not in such bad shape. We have more arable land than either China or India with a fraction of the population. There are huge quantities of fossil fuels, a great, partially dormant water-based system of transportation, and ample timber, ores, and water. Probably, the population would have to relocate from the Southwest back to the upper Midwest.

In the short term, we are still the number two producer of copper in the world, number four in gold, number two in coal, eighth in silver, fourth in steel, fourth in zinc, third in oil, first in nuclear power. Most importantly, we control half the world's grain exports. We're the entire OPEC of the grain market all by ourselves and many Middle Eastern countries would literally starve to death if we declared an embargo.

(Or rather, I guess poor Africans would starve when Arabs bought all their food.)

[ian807]

The USA was ahead in telecom, electronics, computers and other high tech.

Almost all of that has been outsourced to India and China, including design, research and development. Aside from giving away the store to other countries, our military security has been irretrievably compromised. The industry joke is that "IBM" stands for "Indian Business Machines."

The world's wealthy and the USA parted ways after the USSR fell. Nobody with any economic power which is now real source of political power on the planet, gives a fig whether the USA rises or falls economically or in any other way. To them, the country is just a game piece, and government officials, merely "useful idiots."