Written by: Beck

First of all, you're absolutely wrong when you say that no nation has ever risen to a great power while pursuing a policy of free trade. The "Asian Tigers" of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea all had very open trade policies. While you could say that they don't qualify as "great powers," Korea, at least, is the 11th largest economy in the world. Furthermore, the other three are all vastly more powerful economically than most nations relative to their size and population. And if you mean to stick to a much stricter definition of "great powers" to mean only such nations as those who are currently permanent UN Security Council members, my response is that the sample size is unfortunately too small to draw really meaningful conclusions about how things would have been with less protectionism.

The reason I say that America could have turned out similarly without early industrial protectionism is because the real advantage of America has always been a hard working, well educated, and relatively crime free population. So while we might have been more agrarian for a while, any time something in the world took off as the latest hot industry, Americans would have been entering those same industries. It's in our blood.