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If you want to have globally competitive companies, I'm not sure protecting them from global competition is a particularly effective way to achieve that. Brazi
by throwaway34241 7y ago
If you want to have globally competitive companies, I'm not sure protecting them from global competition is a particularly effective way to achieve that. Brazil has high tariffs on computers etc but that hasn't caused them to develop a competitive tech industry.
You're looking at the companies themselves but I think it's also worth considering the users too. If the rest of the world uses Github but China uses a Notgithub that otherwise couldn't compete, that's good for Notgithub but probably bad for the rest of the Chinese tech industry. Just like in Brazil's case, their computer tariffs are good for their domestic computer industry (if it exists), but bad for any other industry that uses computers.
It's certainly not obvious to me that protectionism is an overall win. Even if that were the case, the proposal is actually to block US components from China, so it seems like it should support any Chinese competitors for those components since they don't have to compete against Qualcomm etc anymore.