In a globalized world, savings and investment do not have to be equal in any individual economy. Savers can send their funds almost anywhere in the world in search of a high return on capital. Countries that are competitive, in the sense that they have a high marginal product of capital, will tend to attract such funds. One manifestation of these flows of capital is that multinational companies establish factories where they can produce most cheaply. In the story, we see that Vietnam, a low-wage economy, is attracting capital investment from a Taiwanese company. Capital flows have a similar effect to the migration of labor: when capital flows into a country, it increases the real wage; when capital flows out of a country, real wages decrease. Globalization benefits the world as a whole, but many individual workers may lose out.
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