China (and India) have all the right and incentives to protect their continents from bad economic influences.
This is less true than naive abalysis suggests, because relative deprivation is a significant source of disutility and trade that is “mutually beneficial” before the effects of relative deprivation are considered is often so unequal inn benefit distribution that the total net utility on one side is negative.
Classical comparative advantage arguments for trade tend to ignore the disutility from relative deprivation.
That's one of many places where it occurs, yes (it also happens locally.) Trade can exacerbate it, because even superficially mutually beneficial trade doesn't advance the wealth on both sides equally, and the degree of difference in material position, not merely it's binary existence or not, is a key factor in the magnitude of the resulting disutility.
I suppose this is a matter of judgement though and not an objective fact so to each their own.
That's a nice strawman you've set up, but no one in the discussion actually claimed that.
I think they can take care of themselves now and follow trade policies which are fair.
Everyone wants a piece of the presumed cash cow of the huge moderately untapped market of China.
China can dictate the access to this market.
US cannot do the opposite, where would the US consumer find many made in china electronics and other items for cheap.. china is already entrenched in western markets
It will do anything possible to expand manufacture base, use all necessary means to acquire, absolve, develop, own technology/market.
US government/society has diverse conflicting interested.
* Walmart wants import.
* Consumers wants cheaper goods.
* Defense industry wants war.
* Biz want less regulation.
* Environmentalists wants less/no pollution.
* Other groups want more/less spending/tax on their own pet issue/projects.Disclaimer: I know nothing about international trade policy.
This is not really true in the UK case. While protectionist policies certainly did exist on agricultural goods in the 18th century, the UK moved gradually towards free trade throughout most of the early 19th century - and then embraced it completely with the repeal of the corn laws in 1846.
In fact, the UK at that time had a policy of unilateral free trade - not imposing tariffs on imported goods even when they came from countries who imposed tariffs on British goods.
This did become a problem during wartime. By 1914, the UK was heavily dependent on imported food and a large part of the German strategy was to try to sink ships bringing food to Britain.
The one area where tariffs were still applied was on luxury goods, which were seen to have low price elasticity. (Compare to modern China, which also seeks tariff-free trade on commodities, resources, agricultural products, etc - but heavily taxes luxuries)
It wasn't until the 1930s that there was a serious swing back towards protectionism in the UK.
The UK also, as you mentioned prevented their colonies and countries in their sphere of influence from instituting similar protectionist laws to develop their own industry. Instead there was a role designed for them, namely to provide cheap raw materials.
The US did the same after attaining a similar position as the world superpower later.
.. and in the 20th century [0] to protect the US automobile industry from fuel efficient Japanese imports.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_export_restraints
To your point, it's not necessary or beneficial (in general) for US or Europe to act similarly. Western industries are highly developed and specialized, such regulations hurt consumers in order to prop up industry. So sure, if you want your manufacturing and textile jobs to stay in your country then you can have such regulations, but the cost of that is everyone in your country pays +X% more (in value, e.g. higher price or lower quality) for textiles and manufactured goods, which is what the Chinese consumer is doing right now for cars and every other highly regulated import good.
I think non-Chinese governments should start fighting back on this. It's kinda messed up that Chinese companies can do unlimited business in the U.S. and Europe but then when we have a business that might sell to China, they take more than half the profits.