>At one point in the film Smith visits an auction where factory equipment
>previously owned by the departed, once mighty American firm, Rubbermaid, was
>being sold. The auctioneer tells him that a particularly large, complex and
>expensive piece of machinery -- designed to turn resin into finished rubber
>products -- was purchased by a Chinese firm who were disassembling it for
>shipment back to China.
>
>The Chinese firm was going to pick up where Rubbermaid left off.
As I recall, the Japanese did something very similar in the late 19th century - buying discarded British textile machinery, and not only using it, but learning from it, while the Brits were busy investing their surplus funds abroad. The US is different - we're borrowing funds from abroad!
Doug