The issue is very complex. First - broad generalization - Europe's surviving industry is mostly made of less critical industries. If you look at important things in the world, and the important things that make up or make those important things, a tiny fraction of that is European, and that fraction is shrinking rapidly. There are some things - there is some green manufacturing stuff going on, there is some high-precision stuff in IT/CH/DE, there is ASML and Airbus, Poland can actually make things, etc. - but where will that be in ten or twenty years? I'll tell you: the high-precision stuff is rapidly moving to Asia, the green manufacturing is not very cost effective and uses a lot of imported core technologies, the C919 is going to fly with Chinese engines soon... the list goes on. The EU badly wants to make solar panels, cutting edge chips, fighter jets, rockets et cetera - and it simply can't, not at the cutting edge. The US, on the other hand, can make all of those things. It is still behind China in manufacturing overall, but it can still make a lot of the cutting edge, and it is still innovating.

Second, a lot of the EU stuff is already dead and only continues to exist through inertia. The median German cars and machine tools are worse than the median Chinese and they cost far more.

Third, those numbers often reflect the nebulous concept of "value added." Let's take the case of a refrigerator. Chinese company manufactures every technical part of the refrigerator and ships it to their EU business partner for €100. EU partner assembles it, fills it with foam, and sells it for €600. Most of the "value added" was in the EU! Win for the EU! Go EU manufacturing! The concept of "value added" is the basis for the entire EU VAT system and much of its economic indicators and incentives, while in the US it is almost never mentioned. This is also the source of the most hilarious comparisons (Greek manufacturing superior to the US per capita? χαχαχα)

If you want to cut through the bullshit, you have to look at actual things made. Among the US/CN/EU, who leads: Solar panels (CN), cutting edge chips (US), chipmaking equipment (EU), jet engines (US), aircraft (US), space launch vehicles (US), fighter jets (US), batteries (CN), nuclear reactors (CN), submarines (US), advanced missiles (US), cars (CN), CNC machines (CN), machine tools (CN), precision bearings and linear motion systems (CN), cutting edge medical equipment (US), gas turbines (US/EU), high voltage grid equipment (CN), telecom equipment (CN), construction equipment (US), ships (CN), advanced optics (EU), electric motors (CN), steel (CN), aluminum (CN), oil (US), cutting edge pharma (US), industrial robots (CN), wind turbines (CN), trains (CN), agricultural machinery (US/EU), drones (CN), smartphones (CN.) From that list, China leads eighteen, the US leads eleven, the EU leads two, and the EU and US are tied for two. And China is closing in fast on chipmaking. When China takes that crown, what will the EU have left?