"Personally, I'd love to stop subsidizing the third world at the expense of American citizens. Developing countries need the US a lot more than the US needs them."
That's the exact illusion most Americans live on.
"On November 7, 2016, debt held by the public was $14.3 trillion or about 76% of the previous 12 months of GDP.[5][6][7][8] Intragovernmental holdings stood at $5.4 trillion, giving a combined total gross national debt of $19.8 trillion or about 106% of the previous 12 months of GDP.[7] $6.2 trillion or approximately 45% of the debt held by the public was owned by foreign investors, the largest of which were China and Japan at about $1.25 trillion for China and $1.15 trillion for Japan as of May 2016.[9]"
You are right - no other country in the world can compete with the US on economic grounds. And the reason for this has been decades of international trade that the USA has benefited from. The aim should not be competition but dis-engagement.
It would cause a LOT of short term pain - but 15-20 years later it would show benefits. China and India need to evolve with reduced dependence on exports (and the developed world). In any case they will have the largest markets based on current population projections.
Just look at the kind of income inequality that exists in these countries - I would actually argue that this was a by-product of trying to copy/serve the US model at some level.
Looking at the discussion so far - probably going to get trolled/downvoted but here goes:
From all of the above comments - people are trying to undo only the parts of globalization that they don't like (wage arbitrage is one of them - stop crying!). I truly wonder what would happen if the Indians (and the rest of the world) started treating Americans the same way the America treats them and starts to roll back the impacts of globalization:
1. Stop American businesses from getting favors under trade deals and especially with sales of military equipment
2. Ask each American to provide all their social media account information when entering the country or throw them out
3. Set quotas for American businesses to sell their products/services.
4. Force Google, etc to locate servers and data-centers in China/India directly and give the keys to local governments (if the US government can get access why should other governments not?)
If a trade war did happen:
Specific to India: Their economy is mostly non-export oriented (except the IT services part) - they will probably take longer to raise the quality of living for their population - but it will probably be a better path to take (a trade war would probably help grow domestic businesses faster)
Specific to China: The USA needs access to the Chinese markets rather than the other way. Plus they can always dump all those treasury notes
Perhaps a trade war (rather de-globalization) would be a good idea for the developing world - it would bring better balance to the world and undo globalization as a whole and not parts of it (which is exactly what USA voted for when they elected Trump).
P.S. Please don't give a self-righteous BS response about USA being the land of the free and so on.. I think it's pretty obvious most immigrants are there for the money and quality of living (the kind of quality that comes with money and not society, safety, etc)