No. It means we cannot afford Keynesian economic policies and Progressive socio-economic ideals. The free market has to be unfettered... which means the social engineering efforts of the left must be defeated and buried. Because rhetoric and demagogury concerning the "rich" is so effective with the public today... I am not all that optimistic.
We export few things that cannot be replaced rather easily.
Give an example... and I will give you one.
The Germans across industries make the best heavy equipment in the world. They are only rivaled in a serious way by the Japanese. If you read a book, it is all but a certainty that it was imaged, printed, and bound with German or Japanese equipment. In 2004, I visited the last German foundry that produced castings for print equipment... EVERY other German print equipment company had outsourced their castings to China.
In mature industries, it is going to be very difficult with our labor costs and gov't to compete with developing countries. It will take significant change for which there is no current political will to compete with the Chinese.
BTW, I milestone was passed within the last 3 years. It was announced that China had modernized its farming enough to feed its own people. From a strategic economic standpoint, that is not good for us.
