>>1693248>After all, all that transportation of manufacturing jobs alongside industry to countries with lower wages, has overall weakened the real economy of the usa.Well this is the contemporary contention, that the service economy today is paired side-by-side with virtual post-scarcity in the first-world metropolises, which distribute so many goods that they cant all be sold in the market, which is why funnels such as charity programs have massive imports of unsold stock from companies, which are given to places like food banks and hostels (i know this bc i used to live in a hostel, where trucks full of food pulled in every week).
So while the real economy of the first-world has declined, its wealth has increased, where wealth is defined by access to goods and services. A return to protectionism would put emphasis on production and exportation, which would lower domestic wealth since it would lower consumption by the steamrolling of service economy units like supermarkets, which also employ people for the purpose of prolonging a consumer economy.
Developing* countries are usually the exporters while the developed countries import goods in exchange for currency which feeds industrial development - in places like china, india and africa.
The post-industrial west has no need for national industrialisation because it doesnt compete except in the markets that you outlined, including tech, entertainment, luxuries and other areas.
There's no reason for the UK to make its own plant food if south america can do it cheaper - thats why its converting its "green spaces" into housing estates.
The system of economic self-sufficiency would be autarky, which is what fascist italy practiced, but it is again, a regression from liberalism, which impedes growth, for like you say, once national capital is big enough, it grows into international capital - this is why protectionism is "protectionist"; it shields national capitalists from competition. Tariffs can help a country for a little while, but long term it is uncompetitive and expensive. Autarky too ruins nations because it also produces national energy from its own land - whereas today its better to import arab oil than to drill for oil in your own seas. Like its better to mine for ores in african deserts than in domestic cliffsides. This is the basic law of inte
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