The article says: "For P.P.E., that means budget-conscious hospitals will look to buy cheaper, non-American-produced options. The U.S. companies will want conti

The article says: "For P.P.E., that means budget-conscious hospitals will look to buy cheaper, non-American-produced options. The U.S. companies will want continuing subsidies or protection from imports..." The article doesn't go into why foreign alternatives are cheaper, despite the cost of shipping halfway around the world. Of course it's cheaper if you pay your people $50 for an 80-hour workweek, dump all your toxic waste straight into the environment, and have a totalitarian political system where you can shoot anybody who complains. Foreign firms operating in one of these countries will always be able to push domestic industries out of business, unless tariffs + shipping expenses are enough to negate the cost savings. I live in the Rust Belt, and it continually amazes me how thoughtful, cosmopolitan people struggle to understand that "protectionism" isn't a dirty word. It's also a little weird how the article seems to adopt a "have your cake and eat it too" attitude -- that there's some magic bullet that will allow us to swap out foreign sources for domestic ones without any tariffs or increased costs. I suspect such a thing doesn't exist. Everyone wants to be prepared for overseas disruption, and everyone wants low prices in normal times. The whole point of this entire debate is (or at least ought to be) prioritization or trade-off: Is it okay to pay higher prices in normal times in exchange for being insulated from the next global disruption? If we want both, but can only have one, which one do we want more?