Interesting. I compared China's imports from 2001 to imports from 2011. Quite revealing how much infrastructure they built. In 2001 imports mainly consist of parts and China acts as an assembly line. Cathode tubes make up 1.25% of all imports revealing somewhat outdated tech base. Contrastingly in 2011, focus shifted on importing basic materials and producing things internally with great increase in imports of energy and foodstuffs.<p>Pretty awesome how you can illustrate technological progress of the country by imports/exports.
According to this, the US exports integrated circuits, telephones, digital disk drives, electrical control boards, and semiconductor devices.<p>If this is the case, why are most of the electronics we see in the US made in Asia / China?
Germany is both a big importer and a big exporter of dairy products. I guess this indicates that there isn't any substantial cost associated with cross border trading of these products?