I think the undercurrent that in implied is that there are countries like China who don't play by the normal rules of international espionage. Since they are so tightly coupled to Chinese industry they abuse their resources and power to feed domestic industry. To most people this seems very scummy.

Are there examples the other way? Where the US stole secrets and then handed them off to domestic companies? Maybe in defense? but otherwise?

Yes, there have been such allegations. A recent case involves Airbus who allege industrial espionage in the context of revelations that the German BND helped the NSA spy on European businesses: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32542140

Your link does not support your confirmation.

> Leaks from a secret BND document suggest that its monitoring station at Bad Aibling checked whether European companies were breaking trade embargos after a request from the NSA.

If all the NSA did was look for illegal (off the books) sales of military equipment, that's exactly the kind of thing that's easy to justify ethically. If they were taking Airbus data and funneling it to Boeing, that would be highly unethical.

Is there any evidence the NSA has ever been motivated by economic espionage?

Indeed, the link only confirms that he allegation had been made; whether it has ever occurred is rather harder to confirm, of course.

The whole scandal with Brazil was a bit of a problem too. Although the Petrobras incident is a little fuzzy (the way they like it) as it's very closely tied to the state. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-braz...

You can't consistently maintain that real or alleged spying by NSA is a big bad deal, but the same thing happening to the US isn't a big bad deal, unless you just make a special exception for the sake of anti-Americanism.

Well, it is an American news outlet. I'm pretty sure media outlets in other countries report stuff from that country's point of view...