I dunno, you have to look at the cost side of these things and I'm not qualified in this instance. AFAIK India still protects its handloom manufacturers which IMO is madness cost-wise, but of course there's merit into looking at it on a case by case basis. I think the trouble with protectionism is you might end up subsidizing an inefficient domestic industry indefinitely; and I don't think "reinsurance" is a valid argument most of the time (there's usually enough sellers whom you can buy from even when things are very sour, and not having lost money on inefficient domestic production will keep you rich enough to afford it when things go sour), the valid argument IMO is you want to have a Korean auto company and you doubt that the first few cars it'll make will be able to compete with imported cars so you protect it. But what made this work great in Korea but not so great in India (which AFAIK produced pretty bad cars for internal market under similar protections for many decades) I'm not quite sure.