Kulturkampf

[benji]

"protectionism is an admission of inferiority" is to ignore different manifestations of superiority and inferiority

you could imagine a horde of xenomorphs being unleashed on the US and we shouldn't protect ourselves from them because that would be admitting we are worse than them, we should compete with them in the free market of ideas

so they murder everyone and then when they have the place to themselves we discover are utterly inferior at tasks such as manufacturing, industrial maintenance, technological innovation, governance, and improving quality of life

so if we valued those things, then it turns out protectionism wouldn't have been "admitting inferiority" on those fronts, it would've been preserving our superiority

No, this is a wrong analogy, especially from a libertarian point of view. Protectionism is an admission of inferiority because it assumes the world's most advanced nation can't compete with a single individual. Xenomorphs being unleashed isn't the same situation as a single individual being allowed to trade with Americans to their benefit. (That's aside from how the argument is solely about humans.)

Protectionism isn't libertarian, it's socialist, it assumes the state always knows better than any individuals and thus has a duty to "protect" those individuals from freely trading with who they wish. Socialism is based on the assumption that everyone will be exploited if individuals are allowed do as they personally wish, hence why individualism needs to be abolished for a single mandatory action by all. If Angela, and the other "libertarians" who support protectionism, rejects the argument for free trade then she has no basis to advocate for any libertarian positions as they all oppose the notion that the state knows better than the individual. She should simply stop claiming to be a libertarian and admit she wants a system that creeps ever closer to socialism through permanent self-justification for any and all state actions.