At what cost though? I've heard this protectionist argument from a friend of mine many times before, and it always ends up circling back to his current employer, who if there had been larger economic/regulatory barriers in his industry a decade and change or so ago, would likely not exist.
Protectionism has its place, but we should fully evaluate the cost, damage and benefits created by protectionist policies before implementing them, otherwise you end up with massively subsidized US corn crushing our NAFTA partner's agriculture industry, and Chinese Steel being dumped on the US at significantly lower prices than the US Steel industry can produce said metal at (mostly due to Chinese state subsidies, just like our agribusiness subsidies).
I fully agree. There are many factors involved in this decision: how many jobs are at stake? how beneficial is the technology we're holding back for the population at large? how environmentally damaging is the old industry? how many new jobs can we eventually expect from the new technology? etc.
Note that I did not claim that protectionism should be the default policy. My only claim is: it would be silly for a government to refuse to consider protectionist solutions to certain problems, simply because capitalist dogma says it shouldn't.
Protectionism has its place, but we should fully evaluate the cost, damage and benefits created by protectionist policies before implementing them, otherwise you end up with massively subsidized US corn crushing our NAFTA partner's agriculture industry, and Chinese Steel being dumped on the US at significantly lower prices than the US Steel industry can produce said metal at (mostly due to Chinese state subsidies, just like our agribusiness subsidies).