China's national power keeps growing. Relatively speaking, US national power is being diminished. Why?
President Donald Trump thinks it's the economy. Currently, China grows at 6.5% annually. In contrast, the US grows only at 2%. It doesn't take a genius to realize China will become the dominant economy in 15 years.
To fix the problem, President Trump canceled the TPP because the trade detriments (more imports) to the American economy was greater than the benefits (more exports).
President Trump is trying to remake America into a new China. He wants America to become a great manufacturing power and he's trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
The logic is sound. Economic strength leads to military strength. For example, China seems to outbuild the United States in large naval ships every year. Thus, growing the US economy above its long-term average of 2% is imperative.
However, China's exports ($2 trillion) are only a small part of the Chinese economy ($12 trillion). The bulk of China's economy is dependent on the internal domestic market.
Every year, China's domestic economy keeps growing robustly because there is a technological upgrade propagating from the advanced eastern coastal cities and inward into less-developed China. This process will continue until all of China is as developed as the coastal cities. Thus, China's nominal per-capita GDP will eventually catch up to the United States.
This means the most important metric in evaluating future Chinese and US economic power is population size.
China has a population of 1.4 billion people.
The US has a population of 0.3 billion people.
There is no way for the US to offset China's 4-times population advantage.
Let's look at all of the important metrics.
China (3,053 Million Tonnes of Oil Equivalent) consumes 34% more total energy annually than the United States (2,273 MTOE) and this gap grows wider every year.
China (5,920 TeraWatt-hours) consumes 51% more electricity annually than the United States (3,913 TeraWatt-hours).
China (87,000 units) installs more industrial robots per year than the United States (31,400 units).
China produces and installs ($27.5 billion) more machine tools than the United States ($7.4 billion) every year.
It is obvious that China's overall economy experiences a higher rate of technological upgrade than the US every year. China invests more in industrial robots and machine tools.
As the Chinese per-capita technological investments move toward the US average, this diminishes the economic lead from the earlier American industrialization. China is catching up in per-capita levels of industrial robots and machine tools in its economy.
Since the China-US economic technological level is converging, this leaves population as the only determinant.
Since China's population is four times larger than the US, China's economy will keep growing until it is four times the US economy.