The US has almost no precision machinists. Those guys are in Germany, Swizterland and Japan.
There are all sorts of things you can't build over here or in China because we don't have the people who can do it precisely enough.
There are all sorts of things you can't build over here or in China because we don't have the people who can do it precisely enough.
Additionally, I often need to find precision materials or really high performance components and many times these are from German companies.
Take the humble LED as an example, perhaps the most industry leading company in GaN LEDs is in Germany.
Japanese can often offer the precision needed too but their companies are a lot less accessible and it takes a lot of time to build a relationship with them if you don't have one already. What they are really great at is that once you've built that relationship, they are usually very aggressive at supporting your needs.
In Germany, I think some of it has to do with the fact that they have these government supported institutes for industrial research like HHI (Heinrich Hertz Institute). This allows them to find markets for new and risky technology and then transfer those innovations to industry.