I heard similar arguments about Russia in Jan 2022. I have a clear memory of my confusion: any invasion ends with Putin at the end of a rope, but all the evidence was of a looming invasion. And here we are.
For the average Russian during the 1990s life was worse after economic liberalisation.
What can a vast country like Russia, China or the USA not produce domestically, keep people employed and keep profits at home?
How much is wasted on advertising and market casinos?
On the one hand globalisation expands the labor pool and access to capital. On the other the more labor there is the lower its unit value.
So under autarky prices would rise but so would wages (labor would be more scarce).
So for a big country it is not clear that people are worse off in the long run going alone.
So called comparative advantages are more a function of structure of the economy than long term inherit capabilities.
When people are scarcer their price goes up.
Yeah, except that Russia wants raw natural resources from the Ukraine territories it wants to annex. They can kill all Ukrainians and destroy all of their cities and still be able to extract what they want. Now do that in Taiwan. Are you going to mine semiconductors from under a rock? Do that while an army of Taiwan partisans keeps fighting for decades?