Not sure what they want to protect.

"How did Western nations pull away?" asked Prof VA Nageswara. "One thing that enabled Britain to develop was that the British state was, first and foremost, a war machine." That is obvious. The East India Company defeated the Portuguese in India in 1612 and won monopoly power of trade. It enslaved people and by early 18th century it had morphed into an occupying power of British repression. "In the mid 18th century the population of Britain was about 6 1/2 million. In the late 18th century it grew rapidly and by 1801 it was over 9 million." In contrast, "The Indian population was about 100 million in 1500. Under the Mughal Empire, the population rose to 160 million in 1700." The rise of the British economy was "less a distinct entrepreneurial and technocratic culture than one predominantly defined within an institutional framework spearheaded by the excise and a wall of tariffs". And relentless plunder of its colonies. Renowned economist Utsa Patnaik "in her essay published in Columbia University Press recently, said Britain drained out over $45 trillion from India, which to date has hampered the country's ability to come out of poverty". Whether the British cut off fingers of weavers in Dhaka is disputed but they definitely destroyed our textile industry by imposing tariffs on our textiles while making us pay for cloth from textile mills in Britain. All those mills lie in ruins as cheaper imports from Asia have destroyed British textile industry. The US became rich, first by eliminating Native Americans, and then by using slaves to grow cotton. By the time of the Civil War, the US supplied 75% of the world's cotton, picked by slaves, and there were more millionaires in the southern states of the US than anywhere in the world. Slaves themselves were wealth. They were encouraged to breed and the children were born as slaves, to be sold when they grew up. "India needs to learn that it cannot fight shy of adopting restrictive trade practices when needed. The Union budget for 2020-21 does it well," wrote Nageswaran. "A little more than two years ago, when GoI (government of India) raised some tariffs, as an eternal optimist, I took the view that this was an isolated action driven by a bureaucrat steeped in socialist era thinking," wrote Prof A Panagariya. "Not only have tariff increases continued, licence permit raj-era protectionist vocabulary also has had a comeback." Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd will stop financing infrastructure projects. Vice Chairman Sunil Kanoria said, "India being a socialist economy, we should let the government do it," The government is to pass a law to protect foreign investment. Protection from whom? From the Indian government. Tariff increases collect more taxes and, by protecting domestic prices from competition, protects high taxes on domestic products. Hapless consumers pay.