Comment by _heimdall
15 days ago
Certainly the answer to those questions is always "it depends."
If someone only cares about price, quantity, or some specific measure of quality certainly domestic production is limiting.
You'd want domestic production for other goals like self reliance, sustainability, or resilience.
Or, hear me out, you could build relations with friends and allies and not pretend you're Qing China and it's the 1800s.
Are relations and allies impossible to have with trade tariffs? Historically we have had both, I'm not sure why they would be considered mutually exclusive.
1. Why would you make trade with allies harder?
2. Have you seen what the current US administrations is doing to allies at the moment? (the million threats to Greenland/Denmark, Canada, etc).