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This is how I interpret it: more countries will

- invest in domestic technologies development + reinvest the proceeds into whatever it takes to keep the profit pump pumping (e.g. engineering education/training/"re-skilling" programs)

- de-incentivize equivalent foreign technologies as insurance against getting squeezed by international geopolitics (see e.g. Russia getting blackballed by global financial system essentially overnight, US restricting Nvidia from selling top GPUs to China, COVID->global shipping supply chain meltdown etc.)

- occasionally dip into low-cost free trade as a short-term growth strategy (as ruling political parties play musical chairs and swap leadership/opposition roles)

- exert dominance in intellectual property disputes as ruthlessly as possible (my fave example: fallout of the huawei/qualcomm 5G dispute - every country's communications authority has to ratify a device according to the 5G standard -> whoever owns the patent to the algorithm for the standard collects money for each device -> nasty wide-ranging political dispute that appears to have nothing to do w/ the original patent issue)




Nothing is as addictive as 'short-term' growth strategies and staying in power.


Which is both why free trade and free trade are respectively the future and not the future


Not the future because governments have so much self control? OK.

It's either global trade or dark times. Global trade is the only thing maintaining peace. Thankfully it's too useful to all involved to go away




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