The situation when a country doesn’t participate or engage itself in international trade, preferring, instead, to rely on its own resources and factors of production. Differently stated, it refers to national economic self-sufficiency and independence where a country consumes only goods and services produced within its own borders. Though modern-day nations claim to be open to foreign trade, virtually every nation attempts, implicitly, to restrict imports and encourage exports, all in a bid to have a surplus or positive balance of trade.

Autarky is also known as economic self-sufficiency.