Protectionism is supposed to be an evil bastion of inefficiency, but I’m not so sure that, in a loose sense over the policy space of various protectionisms, none of them are wise policy.

It isn’t just about protecting a baby industry in your country while it develops, but *also* there is the matter of retaining a network of industry necessary to achieve economies of scale in the first place, which may also have an impact on other industries. The marginal cost of the first auto factory is much higher since it includes the entire rest of the supplier network!

Motorola’s attempt to build a phone in the US did not fail due to insufficient virtue of the American worker (“shame on you for not living in a company barracks! lazy! so lazy!”), but rather the lack of this network, and we must also NOT ignore the political and geopolitical environment, where a slight marginal cost may be worth paying in order to avoid strengthening major ideological and political rivals.