← Back to context

Comment by energy123

8 days ago

Autarky is just bad economic policy because comparative advantage is too powerful. Nobody benefits from this. The US loses and everyone else loses. The US loses the most however, both economically and in soft power.

This isn't even the China model. Slapping tariffs on raw inputs guarantees that US industry cannot compete internationally. This is more like the North Korean model.

While there are positives to targeted industrial policy, there are no positives to autarky.

2 comments

energy123

Reply
rstuart4133  8 days ago

> The US loses the most however, both economically and in soft power.

Yes. It loses most because 10-20% of world trade is for value added in the USA. The one exception is the USA of course, because their percentage is 100%. So USA is 100% effected, the rest of the world is 10-20% effected as they continue to happily trade with each other without tariffs.

I dunno about everywhere else, but in Australia the effects are already noticeable. Trade with the USA is dropping, and trade with Canada is growing.