Indeed. At the risk of seeming a cheerleader to the protectionists (and I'm about to convert to one)..... Steve Jobs may have started Apple - and Hewlett and Packard, too - from their garages, but they were in their teens: flexible.
Ph.D'd engineers with 3 kids and 400K debt are not likely to be able to laissez faire out of this mess. Can their wives and kids pick up the slack?
You and me both. Its a viewpoint I'd never thought I'd ever really agree with, but the way things have gone lately, well...
But what I've been saying is that it may not necessarily take tariffs or sanctions or other government intervention. A lot of this problem could be addressed by a change of viewpoint by those in positions of power who make the decisions that affect the educated workforce, a realization that we have a national interest in preserving a technically literate workforce, and the will to act on that. It might mean your company's division shows a quarterly growth of 24.9% instead of the mandated target of 25%, but, heck, you're still darn profitable. Likewise, if that means the stockholders' quarterly dividend is $1.09 per share instead of $1.10, then by God understand that you're still doing pretty well. And if a politician wins reelection by 999,000 votes instead of 1,000,000 because he kept a government research lab operating and doing good science instead of shutting it down like some environmental wacko group wanted, he's got to say BFD, he's still in office, and made the right decision for the country as a whole.