>Oh, really?
Yes, really, Dennis. Profitability in the highly commodified DRAM business in which Japanese companies are still concentrated has been quite weak (and Taiwan is set to bring on massive new capacity in the next few years): Hitachi and NEC were posting massive losses last year (remember the WSJ 6/10/99 article I downloaded or the Mowery analysis from California Management Review Fall 1998 excerpts from which I dowloaded as well?) It's not semiconductors or growth in the abstract that matters. It's profitability. And that's what US companies have enjoyed by concentrating on logic and microcomponent products as well as innovative device designs--and here US companies have little competition. Indeed it's a picture of uncompromised hegemony where it counts. See also Langlois' analysis in the Mowery and Nelson book on Industrial Leadership.
Yours, Rakesh
ps you have not responded either to Robert Eisner's deflationary critique of fears of the US' debtor status.