The United States has such a large GDP because 1/3 of it is the private healthcare industry. Another massive chunk is the government throwing tax dollars at a shell company of a shell company of a shell company that moves a government contract for construction around to each other 4 times, all subsequently increasing GDP.
The argument I’ve seen Americans using is “well only the US would try/ could build a pier in a war zone halfway across the world” which is entirely untrue.
First, almost every country at war does this.
Second, China regularly builds piers all over the world at a fraction of the cost and multiple times the capacity of this one.
Third, the US didn’t really build a pier at all if it is unusable and breaking after just a week.
But that’s the point anyway. It never had to work. The US just had to pretend to be doing something.