Welcome back to the second part of my conversation with Nick Mulder and Lars Schönander.

Picking the narrative up in 1935, get real in this episode:

Why the Great Depression, counterintuitively, made importing commodities cheaper, and how that affected Germany’s and Japan’s protectionism;
The difference between autarky and autarchy;
Whether Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could survive a full-on fuel embargo today by using Nazi-era technology;
Nick’s definition of “temporal claustrophobia,” and what it has to do with Japan ultimately siding with the Axis;
Parallels between the “ABCD circle” (America, Britain, China, Dutch East Indies) and the semiconductor export controls today;
Why having an empire was a liability for Britain;
What sanctions had to do with the Czechoslovaks — even with a larger army — falling to the Nazis;
How the blockades of WWI differed from WWII;
And what lessons pro-decouplers should learn from this history of sanctions.

Nick’s book recommendations:

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EP 58: A Letter to My Younger Self