 they have been for more than 20 years.
Even American car exports are flourishing. Jim O'Neill, Head of Global Economics Research at Goldman Sachs, says disbelievingly, "US auto exports are growing more than US auto imports. I never thought I would still be professionally employed when that day arrived." Russia is buying GM cars like there's no tomorrow.
The other transformation is even more profound. Asian demand is sustaining the world economy in a completely new way. As the IMF's World Economic Outlook noted a few weeks ago, China is now contributing more to world demand than the United States. That's a first.
Asia's hunger for raw materials and foodstuffs is not just sustaining the oil price in the face of America's slowdown; it is improving farm profitability in England and boosting economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa.
Asia's stash of savings, even without China's threatened shift out of dollars, is keeping equity markets surprisingly cheerful |
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and financing investment in all sorts of unlikely places.
If China stops propping up the dollar, it will be acting logically in one sense - why invest in the reserves of a country whose interest rates are lower than your own? But a self-imposed Chinese revaluation would be the result, and China would then import some of America's current slowdown but squash its emerging inflation.
That might be the moment when the dollar began to recover of its own accord.
But then, Asian giants have never been very good at spotting the right moment to buy, and the right moment to sell. 
Frances Cairncross will discuss the future shape of the world economy on BBC Radio 4's Analysis on Thursday November 15 at 8.30pm
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 12, 2007
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Dollar threatens American empire
Time to face up to the gravity of the crisis
The beginnings of a US crash?
