There are two kinds of innovation - revolutionary and incremental.
You cannot gain an insurmountable advantage in revolutionary tech. You can only do so in incremental tech. Because nobody sees the revolutionary innovation coming.
The main topics they have discussed (solar, wind, batteries) have had consistent incremental advancement for decades.
They talked about the 'failure is our goal' strategy that China uses - and it is very successful. The US uses a similar system, though not to the same scale - in part because we have 1/3 the population.
Many people focus on the US's manufacturing problems - which generally consist of high safety regulations and high salaries demanded by workers. Those exist for GOOD reasons and they are not worth giving away to gain manufacturing jobs.
We do not want the bad jobs that poisons the workers and evey one that lives near the factory. We want better than what they strive for in China, and for the most part we have succeeded. We export a lot of things, including computers, oil, vehicles, etc.
Part of the issue is that the export categories are large and often we export one thing but import another in the same category (We export a lot of oil, but also import a lot for example).
The US's biggest exports are aircraft (including spacecraft) and fuels. A lot of that is military aircraft. It also agricultural and meat.
The largest non-export industry however is finance. Lots of foreigners use American banking services. While some of that is investing in American corporations and property, (many consider it a safer investment than their own country - particularly Chinese investors), it also includes US companies doing the financial services for other countries.