> You forget EU car makers have factories outside the EU, in places with much cheaper labor. As do Japan's car makers.
Yes, but many of their billions of R&D spending are still spent on (globally) very well paid (local) engineers. Not saying this is bad, but makes it harder to compete.
> Well, if we just never freed the slaves, we would have internationally competitive cotton.
The US still is the leading exporter of cotton.
> The west marches on high end innovative exports, not competing in the cheap nicknack market.
This is an overgeneralization. E.g. Several of the most successful German companies are grocery retailers (as boring and low-tech as it gets).
> Are ASML and Airbus selling well because they're cheap to make or because of their unique innovations competitors can't easily replicate?
I'm not saying you can't pay out globally uncompetitive wages as long as you're sitting on an R&D advantage, but your low-end un-innovative neighbours will catch up to you when R&D is much cheaper for them (just consider the Japanese electronics industry in the 80s/90s for example; people said the exact same shit back then until they no longer could).
>Yes, but many of their billions of R&D spending are still spent on (globally) very well paid (local) engineers.
Not true anymore. They spend more on bean counters, marketers, managers, consultants, lawyers, etc than on engineers.
>The US still is the leading exporter of cotton.
Because of imported cheap labor or because of automation at scale no country can match?
>but your low-end un-innovative neighbours will catch up to you when R&D is much cheaper for them
Only if you make poor deals where you voluntarily give them all your hard earned technology in exchange for access to their market. Otherwise Mexico and Russia would be industrial superpowers catching up to EU and the US, if all it took was neighbouring you and having cheaper labor than you.