The U.S. Still Leans on the Military-Industrial Complex<br />The United States, after all, has 10 aircraft carriers in active service versus just one<br />for China, although China has a bigger manufacturing industry than the United States.<br />Roughly 10 percent of the $2.2 trillion in factory output in the United States goes into the<br />production of weapons sold mainly to the Defense Department for use by the armed forces.<br />In the summer of 1945, after nearly five years of wartime rationing, the civilian population of the United States was starved for new cars<br />and appliances, new clothing and shoes, and new homes and their furnishings.<br />Given the history of recent decades, is it any wonder<br />that we now have a president who, at least in part, equates “making America strong again” with an enhanced military equipped with the weaponry that an enhanced military requires<br />So did the production of other civilian products — leaving behind weapons bought by<br />the Defense Department as an ever bigger share of the nation’s factory output.<br />Whatever the case, America’s weapons production is still far greater than China’s, while China has burnished<br />its reputation as a manufacturer of civilian goods for export and, increasingly, for its own citizens.
