On a collective level it doesn't make sense for a developed 1st world country to spend a disproportional amount of money, public services etc. for its populatio

On a collective level it doesn't make sense for a developed 1st world country to spend a disproportional amount of money, public services etc. for its population, only to have some large portion of it sit behind a sewing machine all day making T-Shirts. > I think protectionism and tariffs cannot be cast as inherently failures, and are necessary to build an economy[...] I agree. There's a lot of cases to be made for bootstrapping an economy with central planning, protectionism and tariffs, e.g. post-WWII South Korea is a frequently cited example. But this isn't the form tariffs tend to take in 1st world economies. They tend to take the form of concentrated benefits and higher diffuse costs to protect already failing industries that we mostly wouldn't have anymore if it wasn't for the tariffs propping them up.