

The Observatory of Economic Complexity - jermaink
http://atlas.media.mit.edu/

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TrainedMonkey
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all imports revealing somewhat outdated tech base.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.

Pretty awesome how you can illustrate technological progress of the country by
imports/exports.

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csense
According to this, the US exports integrated circuits, telephones, digital
disk drives, electrical control boards, and semiconductor devices.

If this is the case, why are most of the electronics we see in the US made in
Asia / China?

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bane
Maybe what we export is already saturated here, but a technological step above
what's needed elsewhere to develop the economies that need them...no amount of
money can cause those items to be manufactured in the markets that are
importing them.

While unsaturated U.S. market segments need cheap goods so China makes
electronic items and ships them here at a lower price than can be made
domestically...often using the higher end equipment we exported to them.

Also...final assembly of an item is sometimes labeled as "made in"...even if
all the parts that go in aren't from there.

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trothoun
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?

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zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Within the EU, there is essentially zero cost for any cross border trading at
all, you can move your stuff freely between countries, and money transfer is
also essentially free, especially within the euro zone.

