ONE ECONOMY TO RULE THEM ALL:

At least three forces are likely to combine to make the United States an export powerhouse.

First, artificial intelligence and computing power are the future, or even the present, for much of manufacturing. It's not just the robots; look at the hundreds of computers and software-driven devices embedded in a new car. Factory floors these days are nearly empty of people because software-driven machines are doing most of the work. The factory has been reinvented as a quiet place. There is now a joke that "a modern textile mill employs only a man and a dog--the man to feed the dog, and the dog to keep the man away from the machines."2

The next steps in the artificial intelligence revolution, as manifested most publicly through systems like Deep Blue, Watson and Siri, will revolutionize production in one sector after another. Computing power solves more problems each year, including manufacturing problems.

It's not just that Silicon Valley and the Pentagon and our universities give the United States a big edge with smart machines. The subtler point is this: The more the world relies on smart machines, the more domestic wage rates become irrelevant for export prowess. That will help the wealthier countries, most of all America. [...]

The second force behind export growth will be the recent discoveries of very large shale oil and natural gas deposits in the United States. Come 2030, the United States may well be the new Saudi Arabia of energy markets. We have new fossil fuel discoveries to draw upon, enough to fuel this country for decades, and there is plenty of foreign demand for those resources. 

The shale gas revolution started at the beginning of the last decade, as the technology of "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) became easier. Fracking uses compressed water, sand and some chemicals to liberate natural gas from underground repositories. Fracking suddenly accounts for 20 percent of domestic natural gas production--a very rapid increase--and the number is slated to rise further over the next few decades, possibly to account for half of all U.S. natural gas output. This is a technology pioneered and mastered by the United States, and it is the United States that has the greatest capacity to transport the product, market it and deliver to the final customers, including those overseas. The United States also has the greatest capacity eventually to monitor and control for the environmental concerns fracking raises. Even if not all the recently discovered fields pan out or meet expectations (as already seems to be the case with the Marcellus field in the Northeastern United States), the door is open for further discoveries and improvements in extraction technologies. Related new technologies will also boost domestic production of oil. [...]

That brings us to the third reason why America is likely to return as a dominant export power: demand from the rapidly developing countries, and not just or even mainly demand for fossil fuel. As the developing world becomes wealthier, demand for American exports will grow. (Mexico, which is already geared to a U.S.-dominated global economy, is likely to be another big winner, but that is a story for another day.)

In the early stages of growth in developing nations, importers buy timber, copper, nickel and resources linked to construction and infrastructure development. Those have not been U.S. export specialties, and so a lot of the gains from these countries' growth so far have gone to Canada, Australia and Chile. Usually American outputs are geared toward wealthier consumers and higher-quality outputs, which is what you would expect from the world's wealthiest and most technologically advanced home market. To put it simply, the closer other nations come to our economic level, the more they will want to buy our stuff. Indeed most of those nations are growing rapidly, so we can expect their attentions to shift toward American exporters. The leading categories of American exports today--civilian aircraft, semiconductors, cars, pharmaceuticals, machinery and equipment, automobile accessories, and entertainment--are going to be in the sweet spot of growing demand in what we now call the developing world. 

Indeed, of the wealthy nations, the United States probably will do the best at capturing those growing markets. 

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