Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trade barriers, in the sense of protective tariffs to prevent outside manufactures selling cheaply in your domestic market, can be very, very, very good for industrial development. Governing a nation is like cooking a small fish, grasshopper. A little bit of salt (subsidies, tariffs, regulation, taxation to pay for infrastructure, etc) is a wonderful thing, too much salt is unfortunately very easy to apply. And argum…
> Trade barriers, in the sense of protective tariffs to prevent outside manufactures selling cheaply in your domestic market, can be very, very, very good for industrial development. Not really. You hurt your own economy because your own consumers now to pay a higher price for their goods. The protected manufacturer has reduced incentive to reduce costs or improve quality. And of course you have hurt people on the ot…
> Not really.
Yes really, though not always. (The word "only" when talking about who benefits is a little to coarse a generalization...) The tradeoff is between cheap goods now and capitalization (building of factories, etc) for later; often, without tariffs, the local industry would never even be able to get off the ground to where it is competitive. And if "the protected" contribute to the overall economy (a big if, I grant) then the country as a whole benefits. It is how the US did, how Japan did/ does it, sort of how China does it, etc, etc. And you are right that too much protection can make industries less competitive ... except when it doesn't... Like all tradeoffs, there are tradeoffs.
The complexity of human society defies abstract reasoning, and begs for actual example. I don't see any grounding in actual knowledge of history in your arguments (though (1) I grant that too much protectionism is just as bad as too little, and (2) you are probably better grounded in fact than your arguments).