Have majority European descent countries ever been seen by other European descent countries as a threat to manufacturing?

Question

As far as I'm aware, in Australia, currently only countries which are predominantly made up of people not of European descent, such as China, are seen as a "threat" to Australia's manufacturing.

Have majority European descent countries ever viewed other majority European descent countries as a threat to their manufacturing?

I'm interested in both examples where the other country is seen as "inferior" (whether racially, religiously, or culturally), and where the other country is not seen as "inferior".

Answer 1

These situations were totally common throughout history. Starting from the industrial revolution in Britain which led to numerous concerns in France about their textile industry.

I can tell you many other examples.

• The pre-revolutionary Russian Empire where German industry was seen to dominate over domestic industry.

• The Cold War era Soviet Union where it was common to argue for domestic development rather than relying on imports. For instance it is often argued that adoption in the 1970s of the US standards for computers (those of IBM for mainframes and DEC for workstations), and consecutive copying severly hindered domestic computer industry.

• The post-Cold-War era Eastern European countries where the imports from the Western Europe and other countries either killed domestic producers (such as automobile producers RAF, Moskvitch, ZIL, TagAZ, aircraft producer SAZ) or severly hindered the production (civil airliner production in Russia has dropped by about 90%). Because of this, Russia has imposed prohibitive taxation on import of automobiles and planes. In other countries I can mentiontion the Bulgarian conserved food industry which was nearly totally killed after entrance into the EU as well as the machinery and electronics in the Baltic states.

• It is often alleged that the western companies sometimes buy local producers in the Eastern Europe with the only aim to close them down (unfriendly acquisition) so to remove competitors.

• Serious danger to the Ukrauinian producers is cited by the opponents of Ukraine entering the association agreement with the EU, with some commenters predict their food and machinery industries totally devastated.

Answer 2

• Shoes
• Boeing vs Airbus
• BAE vs Lockheed Martin
• Smoot Hawley
• Fordney-Mccumber - which explicitly aimed to protect US factories.

You may also wish to check tariffs on Italian leather shoes - I don't have anything immediately to hand, but the US has traditionally levied tariffs on Italian shoes to protect domestic industry. I believe that Steel was protected in the 1970's against German imports

Ethnicity is a distraction here; protectionism is an attempt to promote domestic industry and workers at the expense of foreign workers. It doesn't matter what color those workers are, the goal is to make sure that domestic workers are rich and foreign workers are impoverished.

If you want to research the question, I'd focus your attention on core domestic industries. (Defined as either (a) Industries with disproportionately large lobbying groups, or (b) designated strategic industries. There will be an overlap). The USA for example wants to maintain a strategic advantage in aerospace, and fears the French and British (particularly when allied).

You limited the question to "manufacturing" - there are a host of counter-market regulations in the farm and service sector. Almost every country has a ridiculous policy about farm products - from Japanese Rice, to US Sugar and Maize to French... well everything (IIRC, Brazil may be an exception). And the current US-European trade treaty will fail because France has imposed protectionist requirements on the entertainment sector.