Pakistan, Oct. 13 -- There is no national sovereignty without economic sovereignty, and economic sovereignty is a series of decisions about purchases and whether they build the country's earning power or cause its destruction. The IPPs were the biggest daylight robbery in Pakistan's history. Trillions of rupees were extracted by conmen in the cloak of businessmen, in connivance with bureaucrats and politicians in the garb of statesmen. The mechanism was simple: obligations in dollars, earnings in rupees. Every devaluation raised the debt, every rise in debt raised the tariff, and the poor paid.

The same playbook is being repeated with the import of CBU/CKD vehicles. Pakistan spent $2.496 billion importing cars and car-assembly kits in FY...