The world manufacturing giant

I ran across this item a few days ago. It begins as follows:

When I saw this story from CNNMoney.com’s Chris Isidor (“China close to catching U.S. in manufacturing”), my first thought was this:

The U.S. still makes things?

Yup. This is what Isidor said:

China's manufacturing base is much more dependent on cheaper goods in such sectors as textiles, apparel, appliances, as well as certain commodities. Textile, apparel and appliances together make up 25% of Chinese manufacturing, compared to 13% in the United States.

The U.S. manufacturing base is well ahead in fields such as aircraft, special industrial machinery and medical and scientific equipment and media-related industries, including software.