The US's WWI-era government expansion was not permanent, was it?
Lol, yeah it was.
It's not an issue of paying for trade in dollars per se, it is that it is exporting dollars as a commodity as the US ruling elite forced the world to use dollars as the means of global trade. So instead of actually producing things (other than weapons, entertainment, and food) the US just exports dollars and gets goods in return (effectively. See petro-dollar recycling for a more complicated and technical explanation of how it works). That's led to the elite getting very rich and living off of the production of other countries, while the US people get impoverished. When countries try to get off of US dollars or try to build up their own agriculture they tend to run into US backed coups if not actual invasions. Or when the US elite decides they need to vampire another nation's economy, say Iraq, they invade and take control over the resources. But it is an unsustainable system and requires constant threats and violence to make it work.
Almost none of this is true.
Your very first problem assuming competence on the part of the US government in regards to Iraq. No, it happened cause Junior wanted revenge for his daddy.
Second, you don't seem to get how the economy works if you think America just endlessly exports dollars. It doesn't, they come back in a variety of methods, usually by investment or buying debt (both government debt and commercial paper).
Third, the difference between production and service is arbitrary and stupid. IBM, IIRC, now views itself as being in the service industry. They still make machines, they just keep the machines and provide the servers as a service.
Same with Amazon web hosting. That's a whole industry that was once production and is now service.
And I could go on. The concept that trade is somehow negative, for example. Let me rephrase what you wrote for a second:
So instead of actually producing things (other than cars) Jim the Autoworker just exports dollars and gets goods in return (effectively. See [thing I didn't even provide a link for] for a more complicated and technical explanation of how it works).
As we are now seeing the US turned into too much of a service/virtual economy and too little of a real one, so can no longer maintain its system and is getting desperate enough to start another world war to cover up the core problems of the economy.
Muh service economy is the stupidest take. The electrician or plumber is in the service economy. A film studio/production company is in the industry section, as they produce an end good that is sold.
It's not the product that's being produced changing, it's how it's being sold that's changing.
