"we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s." Wherever you want to draw the line - R&D investment, industrial complexity, and product sophistication hav

"we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s." Wherever you want to draw the line - R&D investment, industrial complexity, and product sophistication have been going down for the last 30 years and the major turning point was NAFTA, large scale migration, and the more globally oriented policies. Most it seemed pretty rational at the time (much of it still does) but now that we see the results, it's time to take a more nuanced approach.