Well, given that economics doesn't amend itself to double-blind experimental verification, what sort of evidence would you even expect to find? Keep in mind th

Well, given that economics doesn't amend itself to double-blind experimental verification, what sort of evidence would you even expect to find? Keep in mind that economists tend to focus on problems that their own societies face -- if protectionism was only really useful to small, underdeveloped economies, you wouldn't really expect mainstream US or European economists to get a lot of funding to look into it, would you? Note that this is an idea that has been tried under many guises with different names and details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prebisch%E2%80%93Singer_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prebisch%E2%80%93Singer_hypoth... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism Maybe the real answer is that whether these efforts are beneficial for their countries depends on the context, and that sweeping generalizations aren't helpful?