Junkyard Planet

A) The reason behind the majority of US scrap being shipped to China and not India is due to shipping costs. China exports hundreds of billions of dollars to the US and because of this the shipping companies make it cheap to ship things back from the US to China so that their time isn't wasted. In contrast, India hardly exports anything to the US in comparison. This means that although India has the cheaper worker force, the shipping costs are too high and therefore companies would rather ship to China.

B) "Even if you guys could agree on a price, I tell him, the cost of shipping would kill the deal. He nods silently, but i can see on his stony, disappointed face that he has witnessed what I know well: the bounty of an American scrapyard.
This passage really envisions an issue with globalization, the fact that some areas of the world profit immensely while others gain almost nothing. Because of the global market, producers will make their goods where it is cheapest and sell it to where it sells the most, but this at times can leave out certain areas of the world, killing their chances at doing business.

C) Modern transportation can relate to themes raised by Jared Diamond in that it somewhat due to chance and luck that has put certain countries where they are today, but now that they are there they have no one to displace them. This can be seen in China where they happened to receive a lot of business with the US in terms of exports, and now that this has occurred the business for importing scrap has opened up. This then leads to a loop of positive feedback that propels the loop further in that both countries will continue to do as they do. This relates equally to how countries have ended up where they were in history based on who they happened upon and what technology they happened to have at the time.