alt Hacker NewsAnd this wouldn't have happened if we had tried to get them to buy our hardware rather than trying to gatekeep. Protectionism never works in the long term.
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There seems to be a belief that the post-war 20th century order would be a fixed feature rather than a contingency of history. That the US would be #1, Europe #2, and the rest of the world would remain "developing" in rural poverty forever. That somehow China could be prevented from catching up. Now they are, and behind them India. I think people are going to be even more surprised in the latter half of the 21st century when South America and Africa start catching up as well.
Brazil is one to watch if they manage to achieve political stability, as is Nigeria if it can transition from being a petrostate.
I’m under the impression that industrial policy has been pretty good for some Asian companies but there have also been notorious failures like the Jones Act.
So I think it can be summarized as “it all depends” and “skill issue.”
Look at how China does it. They'll happily sell us everything we want - more than enough of it, cheap enough, to put all of our own manufacturers out of business.
Seems to work for them.
> Protectionism never works in the long term.
You seem to misunderstand what Protectionism is. This is not an example of it not working. If anything, it is any example of it working. Because Protectionism is about protecting your industry from foreign competition - exactly what China decided to do.
Same thing with Trump not helping Ukraine and berating NATO. He thought he held all the cards, but now Ukraine has a thriving battle-tested drone industry, UK and France have stepped in to replace the US with advanced missiles and anti-missile systems, stepping up their own production and transferring IP to Ukraine.
Now, the US is left out in the cold with little influence left, themselves now the ones with an anti-missile shortage.
US companies should now be more worried about Chinese companies flooding the market with their, hopefully, very affordable GPU's. The scale at which they can manufacture stuff is unmatched anywhere else. Nvidia can kiss goodbye to their 75%+ profit margins.
Almost everyone knew that these sanctions would backfire within a few years. You can't really put sanctions that have noticeable negative effects on bigger economies. They only work for small to medium economies. I believe sanctions on any economy in top 10 would fail.