Parterre,
Depending how much and how quick exporting comes on line, but overall yes it would hurt some manufacturing from returning to the U.S. That is the "business" interest I mentioned before in the previous post. A lot of businesses like the fact Natural Gas prices are so low in the U.S., cause it helps the bottom line. It also is aiding in offsetting the coal mandidate the Obama adminsitration passed last year. Because you can switch from coal to gas affordably; which definitely is helping prevent consumers suffering a spike in thier electricity billls (OTL).
For reference sake to give you an idea of the spreads: in Oct 2012 --> US $3.90; Europe $11.58 (Import price); Japan $15.30 (Import price). So, there is room to play there. Also, the U.S. is approaching a storage problem, i.e. we are pumping it out of the ground so fast we have no where to put it.
In the reverse most States would prefer higher prices, because they get a cut of the revenue.
There is one export terminal opening in LA around 2015. Right now I am pretty sure they are limited to only exporting to nations we have a FTA with. So, the customers expected for it are U.K., Spain, South Korea, and Japan. There is also an unused import terminal in MD, where there is some talk about converting it to exports instead.
The terminal I would be talking about would be an non-FTA limited Asia focused one, so probably would go up in OR or WA. Though, it would most likley not be built within the first term of a Perry Presidency and just be approved. It takes a while to find the right location, privately finance, and build these things.
In regards to China they actually are at the tip of a giant demographic problem (I am not talking about the shortage of girls either, which is another issue). The Chinese workforce topped out like this year or last year. Eash following year the total number of workers available will actually start shrinking. Since the Chinese export model is built on cheap labor, that is not a good sign. This is why many companies are moving to other nations like Vietnam, because wages have been rising in China due to the slowly shrinking workforce. This will get worse over time, and slow/dilute China's export advantage. Germany uses a different export model, so the fact it has a shrinking demographics as well really does not affect it.
In comparision the U.S. future demographic problem (that I mentioned above) is not quite the same. Thanks to our capitol investments (mostly technology) we are very good at raising worker productivity, so a shortage of future workers is not our issue. We most likely be able to keep ahead of the curve there. Our issue in our collapsing birth rate (not quite European levels but trending that way), is the loss of future consumers. Technology can give you productivity, but there is no force that will create new consumption (especially considering we already are one of the largest per capita consumption nations on the planet).