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mlyle 3 days ago

I think there's surely a little bit of a middle ground?

Subsidizing and protecting local production has a cost: there are gains from trade and operating less efficiently makes everyone's standard of living goes down.

But you don't need to go 100% into protectionism. You can ensure that you have enough domestic industry to

- better weather changes and disruptions

- have a starting knowledge and capital base to use to ramp up production if you have to.

Just having a few percent of domestic demand for advanced ICs covered by local production is enough to make the worst international shocks much softer. Critical needs can still get filled. So a certain amount of subsidy can make sense.