Comment by AnimalMuppet

There are two kinds of "services". You have jobs that are in finance and software, which make good money, and you have jobs in cosmetology and fast food, which have terrible pay. The services that we export are the former.

Your high school grad (or high school dropout) isn't going to get one of those finance or software jobs. But they could get a factory job, if we can get those back.

So the best spin I could put on this is that the emphasis is on physical goods because that's where the people who are hurting in the current economy could find real work.

(Of course, if that were the case, the reasonable thing to do would be to explain that, instead of just acting like services didn't exist as something that is traded.)