US and China Flip the Global Script as Capital Flows Reverse

The Ford Motor Co. plant in Cologne, Germany, has been a fixture of the city’s Rhine River waterfront since 1931, when Model A’s started rolling off the production line. It’s a legacy of what once felt like a perpetual age of corporate expansionism that defined America’s optimistic and ubiquitous place in the world as a source of capital and jobs.

These days, Ford’s Cologne outpost is a faltering emblem. The company announced in September it would be cutting another 1,000 jobs at what is now an electric-vehicle plant — a quarter of the workforce — and go down to a ...