Better For Us or China?

In the Economics class I help in, the students were watching a DVD called "Is Wal Mart Good for America".  They have been discussing the different types of economies and governments.  In this movie it talks a lot about the growth of the Chinese market and the shift in the manufacturing jobs to China.  This have been an obvious issue in America for many years.  In this movie one of the economists argues that the Chinese manufacturing jobs don't hurt Americans...in fact they help them by making goods that are cheaper to buy, thus leaving more money for Amercians to spend on other things.  I don't agree with this.  I think that we are shipping our raw materials overseas and getting cheap products in return.  The Chinese people are the ones who will benefit to the most from this.  By not manufacturing our goods we are forcing ourselves dependant on other nations. If we look back at our own history we can see that during the Civil War this happened between the North and South.  The South had a lot of the raw materials and they would ship them to the North to manufacture the goods.  What happened to the North?  They got richer and stronger which in turn, lead to the North winning the war.  The North winning was a good thing, but it shows that the part of the country that was able to produce its own goods was stronger.  How can anyone think it will benefit us to eliminate our manufacturing jobs and send them overseas??