ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an experiment in understanding the manufacturing world around us. The “waves of opportunity” image is useful for picturing international competition. The waves are affected by, but necessarily coincident with, international business cycles. The solution to this problem is to be found, according to economic logic, in progressively giving away industries to other countries, much as big brother gives his outgrown clothes to his younger brother. In this way a country’s own industries become more sophisticated. The mutual benefit of transferred technologies is evident in the increased trade figures of Japan with the Pacific rim countries and the decrease with the US In the 1970s, trade with the Pacific rim increased from 20 to 25%, and decreased with the US from 25 to 20%.
