I think the last couple of years is a wake-up call for the neo-liberal order.
Before, it was cool to talk about efficiency and how backward it was for countries to try to protect domestic industries instead of just allow “free trade”.
However, the last few years have illustrated that if you don’t have domestic production of essentials, then you are going to be hurting. Look at the early Covid pandemic and the shortage of face masks and other protective equipment. Look at vaccine production and how countries that could manufacture the vaccine prioritized domestic distribution first. Look now at global food supply and how countries as limiting exports of their grains.
The last decade or so is a story about countries and companies pursuing “efficiency” at the expense of increased fragility. Going forward, I think you will see more companies taking a larger role to make sure critical production capabilities stay domestic.
Thought experiment: why doesn't the United States have something like 20 years worth of calories for every American stockpiled by now? I'm more than half-serious. Skim a few percent surplus of stable oils and dried peas over the years, build up a reserve, stick them in vaults in Montana and Virginia. The cost would be quite small, even trivial, in the grand scheme of things.
What if there's a volcanic eruption and we spend half a decade in semi-darkness? Our civilization probably could survive that if we prepared. And we know something of that scale happens every few thousand years. We have more potential for reserve capacity than ever and yet we run on razor-thin margins even for the basics of life.
I'm concerned the neoliberal notion of "efficiency" might be misleading anyways. Normal people may assume it means less waste but generally it feels like it's silently drifted a little bit into really meaning the amount of money flowing into their pockets.
Hopefully the citizens that are against state offering incentives to local farmers learn something, local food production is a national security thing even if is more cheaper today to import same food and let the land unused.
"Look at the early Covid pandemic and the shortage of face masks and other protective equipment. Look at vaccine production and how countries that could manufacture the vaccine prioritized domestic distribution first."
I don't think those are very good examples. A large part of the PPE shortage problem was from not restocking the national stockpile after the 2009 swine flu pandemic, in part from a bi-partisan, multiple administrations by both parties capture of that program by Emergent BioSolutions.
Which then abjectly failed when it had to deliver cell culture grown vaccines in its Baltimore plant that was in reserve for pandemics (fortunately that didn't hurt so much because the Janssen and Oxford vaccines are ... subpar, and Protein Sciences approach which works for flu generally failed or were extremity late (Novovax and Sanofi Pasteur)). We had part of a system and failed to use it properly. On the other hand if we as in the US were sharp we'd have bought the equipment Honeywell ended up scrapping when they shut down mask making in France.
3M for example does make masks in countries like the US and even keeps an extra set of equipment to double production in case of emergencies like this. But of course just doubling normal production isn't enough, and they and other companies like some that got crushed after 2009-10 found it hard to compete against very cheap PPE from the PRC, and refused to risk their companies again after COVID started hitting.
For vaccine manufacturing it's a tall order to expect political systems to be ready for once in a century events. This wasn't so bad for us with COVID since we could tool up during the development and testing of vaccines although the Indian national government abjectly failed to do that, but there was always going to be issues here, especially in learning curve issues.
Also how do you prepare for the best vaccines being mostly completely new technology for mass manufacturing? Even for fill and finish BoNTech's vaccine has at least at some point temperature requirements way beyond normal medical freezing, the latter any of us could achieve with a frost free consumer freezer.
In general, though, you're right, but solutions free of their own corruption problems are very hard. Plus tariffs are regressive taxes.
Before, it was cool to talk about efficiency and how backward it was for countries to try to protect domestic industries instead of just allow “free trade”.
However, the last few years have illustrated that if you don’t have domestic production of essentials, then you are going to be hurting. Look at the early Covid pandemic and the shortage of face masks and other protective equipment. Look at vaccine production and how countries that could manufacture the vaccine prioritized domestic distribution first. Look now at global food supply and how countries as limiting exports of their grains.
The last decade or so is a story about countries and companies pursuing “efficiency” at the expense of increased fragility. Going forward, I think you will see more companies taking a larger role to make sure critical production capabilities stay domestic.