Earlier quoted context omitted.
The part of "bootstrap through tarrifs" that's missing here is the "bootstrap" phase. You can get away with selling domestic rubbish to local consumers when you're a poor country with few options. For an established industrial power: 1. Consumers will not change their behaviour unless you apply punitive levels of tarrifs. A 10% tax probably won't make the customers who have bought a Lexus for their last five cars swi…
Perhaps the most significant problem with maintaining free trade with places outside of Europe is that the lax environmental and labor regulations in those places make it extremely hard to compete. If one factory has to operate clean and one doesn’t, who is going to make the cheaper product? If one factory has access to borderline slave labor and one doesn’t, who is etc. Putting aside competition and focusing on mora…
The people who say "I'm buying brand X because they have a reputation for quality/good design/better total experience" can help finance any difference in labour and environmental remediation costs.
You can't win a "I want the cheapest generic 330-ohm resistor" market wither higher cost structures, but you can come up with a lot of ways to avoid having to enter that market.