History offers an intriguing pattern worth examining. Major reserve currency economies—the US throughout most of the 20th century's first half, pre-WWII Germany, or the post-war success stories of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea—weren't stagnant at all. Quite the opposite. They experienced explosive economic growth, with manufacturing sectors expanding even faster than their overall economies. The conventional narrative often misses this: reserve currency status and rapid industrial expansion weren't contradictory forces. They moved in tandem. When you look at the data across these periods and regions, manufacturing served as the real engine, pulling broader economic development along with it.