well, China manufactures all America's stuff. I will leave it to you how the Soviet-era threat of Nuclear bombs compares, to an American, with the threat of not getting any more stuff.
Now, it's true that as a percent of GDP, China is the largest manufacturer. But per capita it is either Japan or Germany (depending on which charts I was looking at), with US not far behind.
(Unfortunately as the world's largest national economy, a beggar-thy-neighbor export policy doesn't work so well for us.)
