Let’s be clear, ANY country CAN put up protectionist barriers and create a perfectly internal economy. But the consequences are that you’ll be poor very very quickly. You won’t get the resources you need, the capital you need, the price of every product will skyrocket, and you won’t be able to hit economies of scale on alot of things or leverage the Comparative Advantage that other countries have in various goods.
Every advanced and prosperous nation/empire in history has traded. Trade is good. Econometric studies show that even in the case of a rich/high skill nation trading with a poor/low skill nation, BOTH sides end up with more jobs and better paying jobs on net. The media hides this because it focusses on the factory closure and tells you it’s ‘because trade’, but in reality, it’s because that factory wasn’t the most efficient use of the economic resources it consumed. The media doesn’t highlight the high skill service jobs that are created and more than offset the losses at the factory.