Everything is made in China nowadays - we must protect British jobs
This sentiment is a familiar refrain from Labour, the trade unions and even a few paternalistic conservatives. I have been re-reading Lawrence James' 'RAJ - The Making of British India' in preparation for a upcoming trip to the subcontinent and was struck by the following weavers ditty, from 1718, quoted on page 16.
Every jilt of the town, gets a callicoe gown; our own manufactures are out of fashion.
In the sixteenth century, as the East India Company opened up trade with the subcontinent, cheap clothes and textiles flooded the UK market. This put weavers everywhere out of business.
UK consumers drank cheap tea and paid less for a whole range of imported Indian goods - this meant they had more to spend on other goods and services. Weavers found employment in entirely new sectors of the economy and everyone, including Indian manufacturers, benefited.
Government intervention to protect domestic industries would have been wrong in 1718 and it is still wrong now.
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it - Edmund Burke
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