I think you are on to something, but I would phrase it a little differently. Trade policy has clearly been designed to allow large multi-nationals to take advantage of lack of regulation in developing countries - little to no labor, environmental or other restrictions. (You know, the things that generally make western life bearable.) It was clear what the result of this would be: A lot of money being made off the decline of the West. I view it similarly to the way a C-Suite can bleed all the investment out of a successful company, making money hand over fist while they drive it into the ground. (G.E. & Sears come to mind.) Turns out you can do the same things with a country, or even a group of countries. A huge amount of wealth has been transferred to powerful individuals by extracting the decades of investment that built the world-leading economies of the West.

My previous comment is obviously unpopular. Somehow, many people in the software industry, which is one of the least regulated activites on the planet, theoretically love regulatory burden placed on other people, as if "more is better". No, more isn't always better.

But yes, I might have phrased my point obscurely.

As an example of what I mean. I moved into a new building here, in Czechia, twice in my life. For the first time in 2008, for the second time in 2022. On both occassions, I received the full documentation stack (in paper) for the building.

The 2022 stack is almost three times as thick as the 2008 stack. Endless reams upon reams of certificates, medaillons, permissions, test results etc. Is the 2022 building three times as ecological as the 2008 one? Not even remotely, the 2008 building was just fine in all parameters I could judge, a nice middle-class home with low energy footprint.

Somehow, the bureaucratic documentation requirements tripled in 14 years, surely not overnight; more likely, a new regulation came into force every fortnight or so, adding a page or two to the total stack. Each of those steps was probably seen as insignificant by the authorities, but their aggregate effect must be significant. People spent time and resources achieving all those certifications; at the end of the day, it was me who paid for all that work.

And for what gain precisely? The law of diminishing returns is strong in this regard. Most of the really important regulatory stuff was probably already in place by 2008. We didn't live in mud huts with outhouses and didn't burn dirty oil for heat in that building.

This is the kind of red tape running amok that leads to stagnation and high living costs in the West.

That just sounds like arbitrage, and absent laws preventing trade, if business A does not take advantage, then business B would.

And if country A prevented trade, then country B would take advantage and reap the benefits (at least short term, although the short term can be decades long).