Don’t you need to make the case that re-industrialization is something to strive for?
No. It’s a no-brainer. When an industrial power de-industrializes, it’s on it’s way down. That happened to the Netherlands in the 18th Century and Britain in the 20th. See American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips.
It’s not clear to me what “down” means in this context. Britain and Netherlands are still good places to live and work. Those countries do not have the overwhelming political and militiary status that the US does, but I’m not sure losing that would be so bad. And I’m not convinced industrial might is necessarily linked to political or military status.
(I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack–discussing why we want to re-industrialize versus how.)
It’s generally bad for the common people of the country in question. The elite can do all right – maybe even better – by moving from industry to financialization; but it always leads to unemployment or underemployment in the home economy, a widening gap between rich and poor, and so on. The important thing about, say, automobile production moving overseas is not whether the car you drive has a nominally American or Japanese name, but that the change means the loss of the high-wage, low-skill manufacturing jobs that were the basis of broadly shared prosperity from the '50s through the '70s. A manufacturing job (with union representation) in the '50s could lift a working-class man into what amounted to a middle-class life, meaning he could live in the 'burbs and send his kids to college. A job at Wal-Mart can’t do that.