As it should be.
America isn't a manufacturing economy. If China can make things cheaper, LET THEM.
Americans spend thousands of dollars publicly on each citizen to teach them things like calculus and fine arts and literature so that they DON'T have to do things like manual assembly labor.
How many millennials do you know are willing to work doing manual labor like picking strawberries or cleaning toilets or assembling houses? Nobody in America wants to do that at ANY price - and that's confirmed by employers having difficulty finding workers to fill those roles.
Let other unskilled people in countries do those kind of work. Let's open the borders so that low-skilled people can come in and do the manual labor that Americans don't want to do.
This is the optimum global economic strategy. I have no idea why Apple thought it was a good idea to manufacture in the US when it was obvious China (or other places in Asia) was a better option.
Indeed.
When it comes to our everyday lives, most of us innately understand the value of trade and of letting others do things for us when they can do those things more efficiently, better, or at a lower cost. We appreciate the benefits of even those trade relationships which represent trade deficits. We, without having to explain it, get that we are generally better off - e.g., have more free time, can more easily provide for our basic needs, can have more stuff that we want, can do more things that we want - for letting other people do stuff for us, cheaper, when that option is available.
But, for whatever reason, when it comes to the same dynamics working on larger scales - e.g., as between parties in different nations - we don't understand the basic economic realities. We just don't get the degree to which we benefit from trade, even when we have large trade deficits with particular parties or nations.
When we let others do stuff for us, with comparable quality and at less cost, it frees us up to do other things. Employment isn't a zero sum game. There isn't a set amount of stuff to be done which just gets divided up between whoever's available and willing to do it. Humans - and in particular Americans - have always been good at finding ways to use available (i.e. excess) productive capacity to improve our lives - to better provide for basic needs, to make life more fulfilling or easier or more pleasurable or whatever.
As we get better at doing the basic things we need done - e.g., finding food or providing shelter - we have more time to do other things. As we get better at doing those things, we have more time to do still more other things. And so on and so on... That is what increasing prosperity is. We have more time to either create and produce more and better things, or more time to enjoy or explore or whatever. And all levels of society benefit. Some more than others (as compared amount people at a given point in time), of course. Prosperity is relative. But even those at the lower end of the prosperity spectrum can be better off than they might have been a hundred or a thousand years ago. And it's mostly because we get better at doing things and thus have available time and productive desire to do new things.
So much of modern prosperity is the result of trade between nations. And that's true for people in the middle and lower classes. We benefit greatly, e.g., from people in China being willing to do so much work for us on the cheap. We benefit greatly from them being willing to produce basic products for us such that they cost us less - in dollars but also in effect in time - than they would cost us if we produced them ourselves. And there are plenty of bright people who are willing to create and define new productivity roles for others such that those who are unable or unwilling to do so for themselves can have new productivity roles to fill in place of those which they are no longer needed to fill because other people in other parts of the world are filling them for us.
We don't have a problem, in the aggregate, finding work for people in this country. We experience economic disruptions, of course, which create short term aggregate availability of work problems. But such disruptions would happen regardless. And some kinds of work in some areas give way to other kinds of work in other areas, creating significant adjustment issues for some. But, again, it isn't about us having enough work to go around. We have plenty of work to go around because, as I indicated before, we have plenty of people capable of and willing to create new work which can be done. We are good at finding uses for available productive capacity.
Selling stuff to parties in other parts of the world is, of course, generally of benefit to us. But so is buying things from parties in other parts of the world. Trade surpluses or deficits aren't indicative of how much we benefit or are harmed by trade. Rather, it is trade volume which is indicative of such things. Generally speaking, the more trade the better - so long as it is trade entered into by individual parties based on what makes the most sense for them. Exporting is, in itself, good. But so is importing, in itself. A trillion dollars worth of outgoing trade plus two trillion dollars worth of incoming trade is likely better for us - when it comes the prosperity of most everyone in the country - than two hundred million outgoing and one hundred million incoming.
The overarching reality of U.S. trade is this: Other nations pay us a premium for the work we do for them while we pay other nations quite modestly for the work they do for us. That's, of course, not the case in every regard. But it's the broad strokes reality. And other nations being willing to do so much for us at lower costs (i.e., in effect, at a lower time cost), leaves us free to do more, better paying, stuff or leaves us more free time to enjoy. We benefit greatly from trade, whether it be coming in or going out. And even if other nations end up doing more work for us than we do for them.
So, yeah... if China or any other nation can and will make stuff for us cheaper... then, by all means... let them... and say thank you very much.