When the companies in question are google, facebook, twitter, etc., it's a lot more difficult to make the normal "utility calculus" arguments that are the way most economists understand the cost of protectionism to domestic consumers.
When you look at the cost per vehicle paid by consumers in scenario A vs scenario B, there's a clear argument to be made. With services, it's more speculative. Is the average haircut in China better or worse than Malaysia's? With web services, it's near impossible to measure consumption or consumer surplus. The underlying economics driving normal goods and services industries (economies of scale, price competitions, marginal costs of production) aren't there. That makes the economics we can measure in goods industries and theorize in services industries very shaky.
Economists generally do have a sense that choice is good and protectionism is bad, but it's hard to formalize or measure when the products are newspapers, search engines, social networks and dating apps.
When you look at the cost per vehicle paid by consumers in scenario A vs scenario B, there's a clear argument to be made. With services, it's more speculative. Is the average haircut in China better or worse than Malaysia's? With web services, it's near impossible to measure consumption or consumer surplus. The underlying economics driving normal goods and services industries (economies of scale, price competitions, marginal costs of production) aren't there. That makes the economics we can measure in goods industries and theorize in services industries very shaky.
Economists generally do have a sense that choice is good and protectionism is bad, but it's hard to formalize or measure when the products are newspapers, search engines, social networks and dating apps.