US economic power

[Fuchs]

Fuchs, how exactly does the service sector not constitute economic power?

And I'm not sure what the point is of demonstrating the US is not at the top of steel or shipbuilding since they are only two sectors.

Money is mostly an illusion, and even the purchasing power parity concept fails to make services really comparable. A haircut for an Indian costs a couple of cents, a haircut for an U.S.American several dollars. Even if the hair studio and service were perfectly identical - the price would still be different even in ppp terms.

Another problem is that services are in large part a substitution for informal activity. A haircut would be made by family members in most countries, for example. Such activity counts for nothing in statistics, but it is still valuable.
Typical household activities like cleaning can be done formally or informally - in the latter case it means nothing for GDP statistics.

Third; services are only in a very small part available for export. Services - unlike industrial/agricultural value added - is quite unimportant in interaction with other nations. Even in the financial sector it's rather the willingness to postpone consumption and lend away money instead of the associated services that weigh heavily. Services-borne value added does usually not constitute influence beyond the borders.

Finally; this is a pretty much a military/national security related forum. I saw the topic in this context.
Services are almost irrelevant as base for military power. You can't get a rifle from an UPS driver, you cannot sell his services to other nations in exchange for their rifle - but an industry worker can make a rifle for you.
Some services have relevance (like harbour service, railway, airports) - but the bottlenecks count, an abundance of harbour services doesn't help much if only a fraction of their capacity is relevant.

The U.S. economy is like a canoe with two rowers and eight steersmen (the German one is like 30%/70%).
It's misleading to compare its 'power' in terms of full crew instead of just rowers. Other teams don't have ten men in their canoe, but a much higher share of rowers (PRC like 3/3).

The shipbuilding graphic (more modern data is even more extreme; check the wikipedia entry on shipbuilding) - is relevant because mankind has never experienced that a naval power kept its superiority on the seas in face of a challenger who had a greater shipbuilding capacity. Much less a shipbuilding capacity that's stronger by more than an order of magnitude.