What will the world be like now if the West decided to pursue protectionism after WW2?

What will the world be like nobody the West had decided to protect their own producers and not lower tariff barriers with Asian countries, so coutries like Korea and Japan are unable markets for their goods, because say Washington decides to protect the big 3 and Zenith by slapping 500 percent tariff on all Japanese goods in the 60s? And the ECC does likewise.
 
An economic concerns about competition for domestic industries took a back burner to the geopolitical need for a prosperous, industrialized pro-American camp in Asia. South Korea received substantial US economic and military aid, but South Korea's economy was largely closed to american exports before the '80s and '90s.
The US maintained low barriers to Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese imports throughout the Cold War, the US didn't respond with any reciprocal tariffs. The US did force voluntary exports restraints on Japanese auto firms in the 80's, but Japan had more than recovered and developed by that point.
 
A good example of a non-tariff reformed, western economy would be to look at the Australian economy before the major Hawke-Keating reforms of the 1980s.
 
The world would be much more unequal on a global scale because export-oriented industrialization would be a less viable development strategy, and the cost of living in the developed world would also be higher. If you're in Norway and you want to buy coffee beans and bananas year around, that's almost impossible without world trade.
 
The world would be much more unequal on a global scale because export-oriented industrialization would be a less viable development strategy, and the cost of living in the developed world would also be higher. If you're in Norway and you want to buy coffee beans and bananas year around, that's almost impossible without world trade.
Global trade still occurs with tariffs and protection in place. Also in your example, that's not what the OP is postulating. Norway would have no reason to put tariffs on coffee beans and bananas as it has no reason to 'protect' its own production of them (it doesn't produce them).

A better example would be (to use an other Australian example), would be if the government kept protecting (either through tariffs or massive subsidies) domestic car production against overseas manufactured imports - noting that numerous international companies operated local production facilities when this sector of the economy was protected.
 
Global trade still occurs with tariffs and protection in place. Also in your example, that's not what the OP is postulating. Norway would have no reason to put tariffs on coffee beans and bananas as it has no reason to 'protect' its own production of them (it doesn't produce them).

A better example would be (to use an other Australian example), would be if the government kept protecting (either through tariffs or massive subsidies) domestic car production against overseas manufactured imports - noting that numerous international companies operated local production facilities when this sector of the economy was protected.
Australian car companies would be shielded from competition from other firms or incentives to adopt new production technology, and Australian consumers would pay more for cars. The number of people who buy cars is larger than the people who have stock in car companies or work in auto factories, so the cost of living would be slightly lower for most Australians.
Tariffs are essentially a tax on domestic consumers that redistribute consumer surplus toward special interests like Australian companies or the government's tax revenue.

The infant-industry argument (tariffs are needed to help a country build competitive advantage in steel, cars, etc) is one of the most common arguments for tariffs, but it's generally limited to policy options for post-colonial and/or developing country that are just shifting out of subsistence agriculture.

Some countries also have tariffs just as a source of tax revenue. If a poor or newly indecent country doesn't have the bureaucratic capacity to collect income tax data on every citizen, it can fund government's functions by taxing imported goods that arrive in a few port cities. In the 19th century the US got most of its tax revenue from tariffs levied on ships in a few ports like New York and Baltimore, but now US tax revenue comes from other sources.
 

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