Although to the extent that a certain country has more skill and expertise in something than another is totally valid, but what of it?
it's not just skill and expertise, it's also terrain, access to resources, climate, and other things that training just can't improve. It would be silly, for instance, to want to buy your oil from New Jersey. Imagine, if you will, if each state in the US practiced protectionism - a situation the commerce clause was intended to prevent - What would happen?
This is always the criticism against trying to have a start-up industry. But there is a massive difference between trying to promote ridiculous or over-ambitious projects (perhaps like John Quincy Adams' most (arguably) over-ambitious projects) in such a fashion compared to what someone who is scientifically minded tries to promote (Henry Clay) - this very aspect is what defines a good statesmen; it isn't a matter of 'sitting on one's hands' like Friedrich List says. The critics of this policy, generally: the rich, the oligarchy, the reactionary contingent of the population; are always against it, regardless of what is being proposed, so they have to frame and pigeonhole all projects of this nature into this 'ridiculous' category. However, if South Korea or Japan or any of the other countries I cited (which also included the USA throughout most of its history) HADN'T pursued cutting-age technological advancements through the state-directed corporations at the time, and/or other policies harmonious with the American System, then we wouldn't have all the myriad of companies like Samsung, Toshiba, LG, etc. that create hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new value. But for anything to be 'reaped' in this manner, you must first 'sow' the seeds, which is impossible under the Imperial (Free Market / Free Trade) system in which all the major corporations and oligarchical interests simply crush everything opposed to them until the entire system breaks down and collapses into a global depression and/or world war.
So, how ridiculous or misplaced would you have considered Samsung to be when it was first compelled, by government, to be converted from a textile manufacturing company to a high-technology company? Here, South Korea had no experience, no expertise, not a single reason to believe that they could do it, not even the raw materials necessary, yet, here they are today with an annual revenue of 1/4 of a trillion dollars annually.
That said, of course, trying to produce something that is primarily based on climate is a completely different thing and trying to 'grow wine in Antarctica' or whatever the reactionary and overtly ridiculous example they are using to persuade people against the economic system to which we owe our entire modern existence, is silly to the point of not being worthy of discussion.
Do you see the potential in this scenario for the type of 'vigorous action' that Hamilton promoted? Do you see the various layers of the government, some controlled by oligarchical factions and others not? This is the reality that we're interfacing with, and every time one looks at "the government" as a monolithic entity you are blinding yourself to the actuality of what is in front of your face.
I don't view "the government" as a monolithic entity. I view it as a group of individuals, like any other corporation. The actions of that corporation, however, can be viewed in aggregate. And the actions of that corporation universally distort the market.
Protectionism and mercantilism (which is what you are proposing) are out-dated economic policies. You're still thinking in nation-state terms. That's not how the world works anymore.
Well, when one thinks that these methods are hopeless or pointless because you see the dominate form in the government and 'write the rest off' because you deem it unable to perform what is necessary, then that betrays a certain lack of political understanding and a certain level of unreasoning hopelessness. Go read about the New Deal. How the reactionary-feudal Republicans were, after it was clear FDR was the anti-Hilter, the anti-Mussolini, were hopping-mad and raving and frothing against him. Understanding where the 'weak spots' are in this system and striking them will create such a backlash amongst the oligarchical factions that their presence will become more and more known, which in turn will weaken their power. In addition, we can do much to turn elements of the oligarchy against other elements of it. The situation we face is far from hopeless or lost, but we must break from the prison in thinking it as such.
Regarding HOW "protectionism" is 'out-dated' is clear, yet wholly and entirely irrelevant. This is like someone telling Sparticus or Toussaint L'ouverture that freedom is out of style because slavery and oppression are ubiquitous. It is clear that Imperialism is alive, and that it is dominating the planet at present, even as it is collapsing and buckling under the rate of its own exploitation. But as I describe above, and as I have elsewhere, and as will become more clear as you read "Oligarchy" by Jeffrey A. Winters, you'll see that what I'm proposing is not some alternative fad or trend to be taken up or denied, it is not my opinion that this is what needs to be done, it is a survival strategy, as it is REQUIRED behavior if you think you're going to have any sort of freedom or liberty or standard of living for your and your children. We are in a collapsing, death-spiral paradigm, and you claim that 'this is the new normal'. Well that might be, but it doesn't mean that people such as myself can't see the 'Bridge Out' sign up ahead and the cavernous pit up ahead that we are speeding toward. You basically state: 'that may be the way in which to return to autonomy and self-determination and sovereignty, but hey, we've lost, it is hopeless, the world doesn't work that way anymore'. It doesn't have to, the future has yet to be determined. I'm offering survival, progress, advancement, happiness, wealth, technological development, peace and sanity - all of which are the antithesis of our present system.
Take LFTR, here is a perfect example, yet again. This is a photon-torpedo that could be shoved down the throat of the war-mongering, murderous, imperial, gangsterism of the Oil Cartel and the Energy Industry as a whole. They are collectively willfully holding back the tide of human progress and while anyone, looking at this scenario over a large scale time-frame would be correct (in my estimation) in saying that these people are traitors to the human race and should be treated as such, all I'm promoting is to allow humanity to move forward, which will, naturally result in a diminution of power and authority of these people who've done little or nothing worthwhile to deserve it.
This really gets at the flaccid, supine and groveling nature of the Traditional Left, which think that the solutions to this problem reside in the existing paradigm of existing production and technology. They want to chase these people around with red-tape and taxes and expose's and documentaries. They think that restricting production (what cartels and monopolies always do anyway to raise prices) as 'conservationism' is somehow a solution to the problem of our existing energy problems. These tactics, and the people largely promoting them, are wholly inept and worthless. I say: "Make their industries irrelevant!" Break their power by moving humanity forward, past where their power is worth anything anymore.
For if I'm some 'out of date' or 'out of touch' crank, simply because I found the gravity by which world-affairs orbit, and the secret economic history of our country and how we created wealth and national power and technology in the face of the most Imperial and warmongering force that then existed, then what is the alternative? Utopian solutions promoted by foreign demagogues who were financed and promoted by finance oligarchs? Using the above example, how do you think any force, that is outside governmental will ever create something on the scale and capital-intensity that LFTR requires?
