Alexander Galushka

A sovereign economy does not need foreign trade

A sovereign economy does not need foreign trade
23.08.2023

My (alas deceased) friend, great businessman and patriot, Mikhail Yuriev, once asked me a question: why is the ideal a zero foreign trade balance, i.e. the situation where the country sells as much as it buys (i.e. the volume of imports equals the volume of exports)? It turns out, he concluded, that the ideal would be to reduce foreign trade to zero, a very good point on which he built his curious book Fortress Russia. The main idea is: Russia should close itself off from the world and build an autonomous society based only on our traditional Russian values. If you want a perfect foreign trade balance, do it. That is a very productive way of thinking.