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I'm not sure why you're trying to shadowbox with a completely different set of arguments, instead of what I actually said. I fully agree with you on this point, and in fact quite admire Chinese industrial policy.
I'm simply making the point that mathematically it is not possible that America could meaningfully experience a productivity boom driven by exporting to global markets as you initially suggested. There is simply not enough money in global markets capable of absorbing a meaningful productivity increase in American goods. Any such increase in production would need to be absorbed by American consumers, which would then mechanically raise the consumption input of GDP, realistically by quite a bit, if you're proposing that Grok designed Optimus robots or Teslas etc are going to be mass produced and consumed.
My median expectation is similar, in that that significant amounts of what AI can automate was already bullshit, and that application of AI to actual production will find itself limited in an Amdahlian sense by everything it cannot automate. My point is that if you expect rapid American production dominance diffused into the physical world driven by AI advantage, I don't see how you can expect minor net GDP and productivity growth at the same time. Mechanically this would bring up C, I and moderately NX in the GDP equation.
There is (see Americans bullying people into investments), but more importantly this isn't a story of money. AI-driven productivity could lead to cost reductions, and marginal displacement of current imports, eg from the same China (here we assume that the US will be meaningfully better at extracting value out of AI). So it's possible to have substantial growth in production without equally impressive growth in revenues. The story of Chinese solar panels is illustrative. Chyna is replacing a large fraction of global energy infrastructure, what does this buy them? 0.3%?
Ultimately, at the scale of American economy it is just not enough to make things to make a difference.
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