It’s a familiar story in the United States: the factory closes, the jobs move overseas, and another town is left to rust. We’ve been told this is just the inevitable price of progress in a globalized world. High-wage countries, the argument goes, simply cannot compete in manufacturing anymore. But is that true? While the U.S. was watching its industrial base crumble, other wealthy nations were making different choices. Two countries in particular, Germany and South Korea, prove that a nation’s industrial fate isn’t sealed by global trends but by its own policies. Their success provides a stark contrast to the … Continue reading The American Misstep: How Germany and South Korea Kept Their Factories