alt Hacker NewsOn paper it can sound rational. In reality you look at stuff like cars, for only so long people will tolerate buying a car for $60k when other countries, whom you are also competing with, get buy similar cars for $10-20k from China. Those same vehicles are used to boost productivity in your own domestic industries.
There is always a ton of risk involved with protectionism. Primarily whether your taxpayer-subsidized domestic jobs and hypothetical national security risk significantly outweighs all the very real economic costs.
> buying a car for $60k when other countries, whom you are also competing with, get buy similar cars for $10-20k from China
I'd love to hear your examples of this happening. For $22K you can get a BYD Dolphin Surf in Europe. And that's a pretty small car. What are you paying $60K for in the US that's the same size?
Maybe let's try a different match up. The BYD Atto 3 seems to start around 40K in Europe. It's smaller than a Model Y, and people say it is slightly lower in market position, but close enough. The Model Y starts at around 40K as well.
Are the comparisons between expensive US cars (remember the average is just above 50K, and plenty of perfectly good cars like a Honda Civic can be had for half that) and Chinese cars in China?