The West" has given up on being competitive for manufactured goods

I think it would be more accurate to say that the West has given up on being competitive for manufactured consumer goods. For high-end industrial goods, whether machine tools, printing systems or commercial aircraft, the world still buys from the West (as seen in Germany's status year after year as the world's largest net exporting nation (as well as the largest exporter in absolute terms in some years).

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman