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 Cathode tubes make up 1.25% of all imports revealing somewhat outdated tech base.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.

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?

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.

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?

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.