Nations that export manufactured products tend to generate higher marginal GDP growth, which supports higher incomes and therefore marginal tax revenue needed to fund such government expenditures as health care and infrastructure.
Among developed countries, it is an important source of well-paying jobs for the middle class (e.g., engineering) to facilitate greater social mobility for successive generations on the economy.
Countries that primarily produce agricultural and other raw materials (i.e., primary sector) tend to grow slowly and remain either under-developed or developing economies.
The value added through the transformation of raw materials into finished goods reliably generates greater profitability, which underlies the faster growth of developed economies.
The twenty largest countries by industrial output (in PPP terms) at peak level as of 2020, according to the IMF and CIA World Factbook.