>Yes, but many of their billions of R&D spending are still spent on (globally) very well paid (local) engineers.

Not true anymore. They spend more on bean counters, marketers, managers, consultants, lawyers, etc than on engineers.

>The US still is the leading exporter of cotton.

Because of imported cheap labor or because of automation at scale no country can match?

>but your low-end un-innovative neighbours will catch up to you when R&D is much cheaper for them

Only if you make poor deals where you voluntarily give them all your hard earned technology in exchange for access to their market. Otherwise Mexico and Russia would be industrial superpowers catching up to EU and the US, if all it took was neighbouring you and having cheaper labor than you.