Self-Sufficiency Revisited

The pandemic and geopolitical tensions revived arguments for domestic production of critical goods. When global supply chains broke, countries saw that relying on foreign sources for medical supplies and semiconductors created dangerous vulnerabilities.

But complete self-sufficiency is a fantasy for any modern economy. No country has all the resources, skills, and technology to make everything efficiently, and attempts at autarky have consistently produced poverty and stagnation. The smart middle ground is strategic autonomy: keeping domestic capacity for critical goods while trading freely for everything else.