Comment by WalterBright
8 days ago
Preventing imports will force them to pay the higher prices for the local stuff.
Maybe it's better to let them decide what they want to buy.
8 days ago
Preventing imports will force them to pay the higher prices for the local stuff.
Maybe it's better to let them decide what they want to buy.
that's how you protect your local economy. that's pretty normal everywhere. in europe people go on strike if imports threaten their livelyhood. dumping cheap clothing on an economy that can't handle it is not really helping. it's going to make the local stuff even more expensive because there is less demand for it.
local development simply does not happen if outside products are allowed to dominate.
if we were talking about a part, say less than half of the market, that would be fine, but the import of cheap clothing is so massive that there is no more room for a local market.
Yes, I know this practice is commonplace. What it does is "protect" a specific industry, but that results in less choice for consumers and higher prices.
Protectionism has value when applied to strategic industries, like chip making, that you cannot afford to have cut off.
Making local garments is not a strategic industry.
P.S. Every businessman believes in the free market for everyone except his own business, which the government should protect from competition. The same for unions.
this is not about protecting businesses. this is about providing jobs for locals. many african countries are struggling with that.
providing an income for everyone is important. keeping everyone satisfied is too. not to mention not loosing your cultural identity. and if the clothing industry is able to provide jobs by keeping cheap low quality products out of the country, why would that be bad? clothing is not the biggest expense people have, so making clothing a bit more expensive is not going to hurt that much.
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