Whichever it is, the point is that tariffs are the worst way to coerce change in an economy. There's no guarantee they will have anything like the effect intended, because the point in the economy where they're levied (importing X) is completely different from the point in the economy we're trying to change (locally making X). Even if they do, the costs of the change can be incredibly high. If you want to promote local production, just subsidise local production. It's generally a bad idea, but the least worst by a long mile.
Another important point is that outsourcing as-actually-implemented isn't usually seeking "efficient production," just labor arbitrage.
> If you want to promote local production, just subsidise local production. It's generally a bad idea, but the least worst by a long mile.
I'm also fine with subsidies, but often that seems more difficult to sustain politically. It seems like tariffs and subsidies go hand in hand rather than be an either/or policy (e.g. use tariffs to fund the subsidies).
Pretty much any arbitrage is an economic inefficiency being exploited, whether it's financial (information inefficiences), shipping/merchants (geographic & local preference inefficiencies), storage (time preference inefficiencies), outsourcing (labor), etc. And in the course of exploiting it, it makes the inefficiency go away.
I think the key points are 1) that's not the kind of thing the word "efficiency" typically brings to mind, and 2) there are quite valid political reasons to want to discourage that kind of "efficiency."
Listening to the classical economists in this case is a lot like listening to a paperclip optimizer complain about all the non-paperclip production that wastefully divert resources away from more paperclips. They have a point, but only from a perspective that leaves a lot of important stuff out.
> When nations cut themself off from the global economy, they often think that they've made themselves self-sufficient right up until a foreign power that's been trading the whole time shows up in your capital city with a fleet of gunboats to forcibly open your country to world markets.
That's a straw-man, though. I don't think anyone in favor of tariffs or protectionism is advocating for a pre-Meiji like economic isolationism.
Also military vulnerability is not the sole territory of protectionism:
When nations make themselves over-dependent on the global economy, they often think that they've made themselves competitive right up until a foreign power they've outsourced their gunboat production to cuts them off from their just-in-time supply of spare parts and shows up to their capital city with a fleet of gunboats to forcibly subject them to a new political or ideological regime.