If you don't trade you won't have all the things you need. You can't legislate other peoples costs, subsidies, environment disregard, slave labour, natural resources and technological advances.
As seen in DPRK in 1990s or Albania in 1950. If you don't produce something other countries want, you'll starve to death. Import raw materials, export finished products, that how the wealth of the West was built. Now with no technological edge this would be harder to achieve.
There is no free lunch. You need more efficient government with less restrictions, and a good workforce with imported highly skilled people from around the world (ready to work, ready to earn, ready to generate taxes). Technology will create the profit margin the society needs and with this it'll be able to take care of he ones that can't produce and need help.
> You can't legislate other peoples costs, subsidies, environment disregard, slave labour, natural resources and technological advances.
You absolutely can. The evidence of this is clear. If you want a recent example, see the Inflation Reduction Act, that requires domestically sourced supply chains for batteries, EVs, and solar panels, as well as union labor. TSMC now builds semiconductors in Arizona Apple uses, with US labor. Fiber optics being installed for rural bandwidth is mandated to be sourced from US providers. Steel is sourced from Nucor in Gallatin, Kentucky for domestic use. Policy drives outcomes at scale.
You say it cannot be done when it is being done. Policy works, and it can be used to bend economics to what the desired outcome is. A shorter work week can be a desired outcome.
Do they really? They may be intended to do that, but if you think from the basic law of supply and demand the effects are clear.
This policy will lead to more expensive batteries, EVs and solar panels. This will be the effect. Policies can help, when they improve the competitiveness of the industry, usually when there is less regulation and taxation.
Chinese EV's cost 10K, comparable US cost 25K. Yes, we can legislate to forbid these communist law-breaking people to stop selling us their cars. But the effect will be more old clunkers on the road, more pollution and less money to spend on something else. And the Chinese will build and sell them to the rest of the world and grow their companies to such size that the moment you remove the tariff US companies will be dead. To fight this only productivity and technology will help, not legislation. You can't legislate your way to a full belly. Profit should come from somewhere. And if the US hadn't had the US dollar as a reserve currency shit would have hit the fan much faster.
As seen in DPRK in 1990s or Albania in 1950. If you don't produce something other countries want, you'll starve to death. Import raw materials, export finished products, that how the wealth of the West was built. Now with no technological edge this would be harder to achieve.
Protectionism was attempted many times before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws
There is no free lunch. You need more efficient government with less restrictions, and a good workforce with imported highly skilled people from around the world (ready to work, ready to earn, ready to generate taxes). Technology will create the profit margin the society needs and with this it'll be able to take care of he ones that can't produce and need help.