During his presidential campaign, Trump spared no effort to blame China for harming the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Although bringing home American manufacturers was a key pledge in Trump's protectionist "Make America Strong Again" slogan, statistics once again suggests that the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs is more of a domestic issue than something caused by such external reasons as the China factor.

In the same Foreign Affairs article, Levy said the share of manufacturing employment in total U.S. nonfarm payrolls -- the primary indicator used to assess U.S. job creation -- fell from 12 percent in December 2001 to 8.5 percent in December 2017.

He called the decline, which came in the wake of China's accession into the WTO, "a drop of just over 29 percent ... that actually represents a slowing of a preexisting trend."

Levy said the share of labor in U.S. manufacturing fell by more than 33 percent between 1985 and 2001, the 16 years leading up to China's WTO membership. That backed up his conclusion that China, if anything, had actually played a much lesser role in the downward trend.

Turning the calendar back by a further 16-year time, the author said "we can see the same trend in the United States: a 31 percent drop from an initial 25.9 percent in 1969."

"That occurred during a period in which China was largely isolated from the global economy and it therefore cannot be held responsible," Levy said.

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