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Congratulations. You have eaten up the whole capitalist propaganda in one big gulp.
No, people are not doing it because some imaginary moral high ground. Guess what... there is an actual market for ethically sourced goods, one for organical produce and there is a constant demand for domestic high quality.
But that's not what is politically supported because we need to make the insanely rich even richer in the name of holy capitalism. And that means subsidising the cheapest stuff with the lowest quality people will still accept to maximise profits of a few people. That means outsourcing production to China by heavily subsidising transport costs. That means selling off technology to China because its success is threatning other sector's profits at home. It is not about the morals, ffs it's not even about the actual costs. It is simply about getting the lowest cost for the people selling you shit here to increase their profits, all while socialising the (not even well) hidden extra costs involved.
The talk about morals and ethics is a lie you get fed to look away from actual facts.
Germany basically developed modern mass produced solar tech. A German company is market leader in wind power (#3 from Denmark, #5 Spain btw...). If you look up leading battery researchers or institutions involved you will not find a lot of Chinese names but European and US ones. We develop that stuff ... and then we give the tech away to get produced elsewhere.
If you think this happens for some moral reasons you are just totally lost.
It happens because new tech threatens estabished businesses that then bribe politicians (see the destruction of 100k+ jobs in solar in Germany to save ~10k workers in coal for example) or because outsourcing opens up possibilities to offload costs to the population (like the mentioned rediculously subsidised transport costs supporting all that cheap crap Chinese mail-order business).
Or to keep with your analogy: We are not "shooting ourselves in the foot, legs and the critical organs". A few people are doing this to us because they can then profit from be the faster ones.