Which is the kind of thing that hobbles the economy - it's not like those counties are building their own Intels and Apples as a result of the tariffs.

Yeah exactly. I think the idea of protectionism to kick start the economy probably worked a lot better in the 20th century. In a reasonable space of time you could clone a lot of the products you need and then start exporting.

Take cloning a 1970s car vs an electric one from 2021. While not trivial, I feel if you can make, stamp and weld steel you are half way there for the 1970s. For an electric car you need an enormous supply chain of batteries, microelectronics and all kinds of safety features, etc etc. It's so complicated that big car makers now basically just have one platform of car they base dozens of models off.

However, it's not all bad. China's one child policy is really going to start biting them over the next 10-20 years (and even though they've reduced it now it's hard to see the mindset ever changing) and there will be an enormous demand for cheap labour, which I expect Africa to provide.

It can work for things with high capital costs where the tariffs are used to keep the plant at full utilisation which is kind of what S Korea did and the US might do with a chip fab partly for strategic reasons.