The premise of the article seems absurd to me. Retail business is not the economic base of small towns, but more support services that are reliant on the manufacturing, or agricultural, or mining, or fishing, or tourism, or whatever the real economic base(s) of a town is.
I'm glad to see Freepers know more about economics than most economics professors. There is no way for a small town to generate a robust economy by just having a collection of retail stores where everybody sells to each other. (The same is true for services provided locally.)
Some other source of wealth is needed. And that has to be based on actual productivity, not just re-arranging who owns what asset. So there has to be farming, or mining, or timber harvesting, or some kind of value added manufacturing, or retail or wholesale distribution which includes people outside the community.
Ask Germany and China why they restrict imports.