They do, but they are very vulnerable. In socioeconomic terms, their system is somewhat brittle and inelastic. What would otherwise be minor interruptions for other countries assume larger proportions because of their lack of indigenous resources. If we hadn't a-bombed them into submission, there is a good chance they might have eventually collapsed because of the stranglehold the U.S. submarine force had put on their importation of outside resources. When a country becomes totally dependent on outsiders for important things, they lose a measure of national security and control of their own national destiny that it is almost impossible to put a price on in the marketplace.
Likewise, there are third-world countries with significant natural resources, but lack the infrastructure to fully exploit them for their own benefit. They need outside help, and without it, they struggle.
Then there are developed countries with reasonable levels of indigenous resources and infrastructure, but the declining powers of men have rendered them somewhat impotent as players on the world stage. England is a good example. It has gone from a world-girdling empire and "Britannia Rules The Waves", to a quaint, tourist-stop country of shopkeepers and sheepherders (no insult intended to our friend Tony Blair).
to gain wealth, but we can still research, develop, and sell our way to the top.
Not if you lack the intellectual capital to do that and the industrial might to exploit it. Time was that American innovators were the top of the line. Edison invented and developed many modern technologies. George Westinghouse took the ideas of Tesla and, using as a base a company that had before then been known for making air brakes for railcars, built the modern electrical distribution system. We built the modern communications system in this country largely from the work of two (American) men. Lee de Forest, who invented the "audion" vacuum tube, which made electronic amplification of signals possible, and Edwin Howard Armstrong, who figured out how to use it to do that, by invention of the regenerative, or feedback, receiver circuit. Armstrong also later invented the superheterodyne receiver circuit, and the wideband FM broadcasting system. Philo Farnsworth, Utah farm boy, conceived of and developed the system of electronic television we have today, and American companies like GE and RCA and Westinghouse built entire industries from these discoveries. And even the reason all of us are able to be here now and today doing what we are, using a personal computer, came of the invention of the methods of VLSI, which came from LSI, which came from a device that replaced the vacuum tube, the solid state semiconductor. This was invented by a team of physicists (Bardeen, Shockley, Brittain, et al.) working at a U.S. research lab (Bell Laboratories), which was a part of a U.S. manufacturing firm (Bell Telephone).
These things are all gone, now. Sold out, in large part, for thirty pieces of silver in the foreign marketplace. And the best and brightest students coming up today see this happening, and think, why should I bother being a scientist, engineer, or inventor? I can be a lawyer and make millions suing the pants off of these same companies, or I can be a businessman making millions in yearly bonuses because I saved the company money by offshoring all the jobs.
i believe we also produce something like 25% of the world's food, yet only have 1/5 farming land. thats innovation as well, and we are producing a good that will only grow in demand.
No question that the agriculture business is important. And these goods are a reasonable thing to offer for trade.
But there are any number of countries out there, some of whom do not wish us well, who would be very happy if we reverted to an agricultural nation, foreswearing any interest in being a technological or industrial power. They'd be happy to eat our food and smoke our cancer sticks and maybe now and then send us an outmoded computer or stripped-down Toyota, and have us be thankful for the deal. Because that kind of country isn't going to be a world-class military, technological, industrial, or innovative power on the world stage. And if we get out of line, they can send their advanced armored vehicles and aircraft and missiles in, secure in the knowledge that the best opposition we could offer is to send our farmers out with their pitchforks to joust with panzers.