Jakarta. Former US President Donald Trump is wrong and misleading when he accuses Asian countries of stealing American manufacturing jobs, according to Lili Yan Ing, Secretary-General of the International Economic Association (IEA) and a prominent expert on international economics.

In a seminar hosted by the East Asia Institute at the National University of Singapore on Thursday, Lili said that manufacturing is no longer the core of US employment, with the services sector now dominating the economy.

“Seventy-five percent of US jobs are in the services sector. If you include self-employed individuals, that figure rises to 91 percent,” she said during the videoconference.

Lili also pointed out that the United States has been the world’s largest economy since the 1890s, with a GDP of $29 trillion in 2024, of which 81 percent comes from services.

She also underlined that it’s a natural progression for developed economies to increasingly rely on services.

“It's very natural for all countries in the world -- they are moving from agriculture and manufacturing to the services sector. This is what's happening to most developed countries right now,” Lili said.

Trump’s narrative that China, Southeast Asian nations, Japan, and South Korea are stealing US manufacturing jobs, she argued, is both false and politically motivated.

Framing Asia as the culprit is “entirely misleading,” she said.

Before Trump’s administration, the average unemployment rate in the US between 2021 and 2024 was 3.8 percent -- one of the lowest among developed economies, Lili noted.

“So, the argument that Asia is stealing the manufacturing jobs from the US is very wrong,” she asserted.

Moreover, Trump’s repeated promises to restore manufacturing jobs ignore the fact that the majority of profits for US companies now come from services, not factories.

His signature “America First” trade policy relied on extreme protectionism and a flawed belief that trading partners were taking advantage of the US. “They’re ripping us off” are the words he kept repeating on many public occasions.

In reality, globalization has benefited developed countries -- and no country has benefited more than the United States, Lili said.

Thanks to globalization, the average American income rose from $7,000 in 1970 to $86,000 in 2024, according to Lili.

Trump’s rhetoric, she added, has distracted policymakers from addressing the three real challenges facing the US economy: rising public and private debt, a growing fiscal deficit, and widening income inequality.

She noted that the top 10 percent of wealthiest American households control 60 percent of the US economy.

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