It's not a requirement, it's a choice, and one with catastrophic downside risk.

Refusing protectionist trade policy became popular among the people who make these decisions, a trend which accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We're in the middle of a crisis which brought to stark light the lack of resilience created by this relentless focus on efficiency and productivity at any cost.

But this is policy, not immutable law. Markets do predictable things in the absence of trade protection, subsidy, and state investment, true; but they do predictable things in the presence of them also.