For the most part this is because wages are higher in the US, so you need to make more expensive stuff to make it worth it.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/22/the-iphone-manufacturing-co...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacture...
Beijing Automotive Industry is interesting. They have been trying to buy their way into (more competitive) western technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Automotive_Industry_Ho...
After several unsuccessful attempts to buy struggling European automakers in 2009, such as Saab, Volvo, and Opel as well as technology from the American Chrysler, BAIC fulfilled its aim of obtaining valuable Western technology that same year purchasing technology from a former unit of General Motors, Saab Automobile. This allows it to produce older Saab models (but not brand them as Saabs[citation needed]) for sale in China.
I also highly doubt america produces more than a fraction of those made in asia. Is bamboo even growing in north america?
You won't find a similar page where a U.S. airline touts their new Chinese-made airliner.
"Government subsidies are taking as much as $200 per tonne off the cost of production. Chinese Governments subsidize the local industry in order to protect jobs, and to maintain a level of “social order”. http://blog.alcircle.com/2013/03/04/the-secret-of-chinese-al...
I'm going to guess that most scrap is recycled locally, but shipping bauxite to China and buying back bulk aluminum is cheaper than doing it locally. Is recycling done this way also?
Here's a list of recycled smelting operations: http://www.lightmetalage.com/producers.php
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/
Recycling is ~75% of imports. About half of recycling is from manufacturing waste, about half from recycled aluminum products.
The major source of US imports is Canada, in 2013 they supplied 64% of US imports (China was 4%, behind both Russia and the UAE at 5%).
It'd be interesting to see if China is exporting raw aluminum or finished products.
Low labour costs help.
I've begun strongly suspecting that a major element of what China's been exporting, however, has been its environment as dumping ground.
Much of the growth of China's economy has come since 2000, and the environmental toil's been tremendous. Where earlier extractive-resource countries have raped their mineral resources, what China's done is to rape its atmosphere, waters, land, etc. Coal-fired electricity, heat, and industry, rare earths extraction (the "rare" has more to do with their concentration in ores -- massive amounts of overburden must e processed), chemical contamination, etc.
Makes you wonder how long they can keep this going.
There is a lot of applause given to fiat currencies, but when prices are continuously appreciating it becomes extremely difficult to determine if the underlying factors are from sustainable demand (as opposed to software and information tech where we have strong deflationary pressure.) You can borrow money, and you just need to earn enough to cover the debt. You can also just borrow more.
There are people who, quite literally, would do more good to the world not working than working. Especially those producing products or services which are net negative. I started noting this with the growth in products that seemed aimed entirely being disposable, and retailer's view of them only as vehicles for moving dollars: retail exists less to move goods than to move money through the economy. Work of many sorts exists as much as a workfactor activity for reallocating wealth.
Other fair means of allocating both productive activity and income could avoid much of this.
The US imbues large technological value to an otherwise raw product. You pay for their knowledge more than the raw product. The benefit the US enjoys is the marginal cost of another plane is much lower than the marginal cost of producing raw aluminium.
Their supposed copycat jet fighter has gone nowhere so far. There's zero evidence they have the ability to bring it to production and deployment.
There are several countries that could build a 737 clone.
Cisco continues to dominate routers, despite China's attempt to steal from them and clone their products.
Windows, iOS, Android dominate operating systems, despite China's continued attempt to build a serious home-grown operating system.
Russia has been stealing US industrial and military secrets for 60 years. It also didn't do much for them. There is a lot more to it than just stealing trade secrets - that's the easy part.
Huawei revenues are already on par with Cisco, at least that one worked out pretty well.
To what extent I'm not entirely certain.
I'm not sure there are necessarily broad conclusions to be made from this, but what strikes me is the thought that in the long run knowledge diffuses everywhere and the economic advantages may get reduced down to physical constraints on energy and materials. In that case, nations that vertically integrate with their own key industries may be the most independent. Of course, it's arguable which industries are key.
Fun fact, Ted's Montana Grill actually uses paper straws as a conservation effort IIRC. They can get soggy but it is something unique I haven't seen before.
Also wrapping straws in something is a health code issue. Some places even in the US do no require it to be done.
But most mcdonald in asia and africa have a straw box like this one. http://www.wesellcoffee.com/media/22711%20STRAW%20DISP.jpg
So it's not wrapped at all. Regarding the health issue you mentioned, if people don't mind drinking from glass in a restaurant, why do they mind drinking from unwrapped straws? I believe unwrapped straws in a container is at least as clean as glass from any bar.