I can give you a detailed answer if you give a time period. The economic realities of international competition vary heavily over time, even between decades. If you want to get a more specific answer, you need a scope condition.

Part 1

Some caution is called for in critiquing a second-hand account of an argument made by an unknown author. I'm not going to let that stop me, but bear in mind that I'm saying everything below with no knowledge of when and where this argument was made, info which could provide important context to understand what the original argument was. 

Also I'm going to refer to Major Western Powers as "the West" and the countries that can produce important goods and services cheaply as "the Rest", for the sake of brevity. I've tried to pick names that are fairly neutral, I'm happy to change if you, or the mods, recommend something else that's reasonably short and easy to distinguish (different first letters help, keeping terms like "employee" and "employer" straight drives me batty). 

The argument you outline is unusual. Generally, being offered important goods and services for free, or at least more cheaply, is associated with increased wealth and ability to afford to buy other things, not with losing your shirt. 

There's a strong left-wing anti-colonial critique of the West's involvement in the rest of the world, particularly in the form of the European empires of the 18th-20th centuries, American interventions in South America in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the West's soft influence in the 20th century post the dissolution of the German, French and Dutch empires in the early 20th century. The main line is that the West exploited the Rest, by transferring resources from them to the West without proper compensation, Lenin famously expressed this in 1917 in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and a number of thinkers have continued in this vein, e.g. under the label od "dependency theory". Fuentes-Ramirez, 2017, summaries the view as:

There are notable differences between the various economists associated with dependency theory, but their theories can be synthesized as the idea that advanced capitalist nations (the core) exploit the periphery by direct extraction of profit, unequal exchange, and/or monopolistic control over trade.

David Harvey, in New Imperialism (2003), wrote even more strongly about the West, well the USA's, motives:

... it is hard to make sense of the general territorial strategy of containment of Soviet Power by the United States after the Second World Wart ... without recognising the compelling need felt on the part of the business interests in the United Stats to keep as much of the world as possible open to capital accumulation through the expansion of trade, commerce and opportunities for foreign investment.

This is not jusy an argument about the West taking raw commodities from the Rest. Harvey then goes on to write that the US, in the 1970s, deliberately undermined its dominance in manufacturing, by allowing in manufactured goods produced offshore ("offshore production"), with the following note: 

The benefit, however, was ever cheaper goods from elsewhere to fuel the endless consumerism to which the US was committed.

This view of Western policy as aiming to increase imports is not confined to dependency theorists. There's also a line of more conservative historians that sees European colonies in this light, Niall Fergusson for example in  argues the British Empire formed in the 19th century was a good thing because it fostered free trade between members, both directly and through fostering institutions supportive of economic development.  O’Rourke, Prados de la Escosura, & Daudin (2008) also argued that the British empire was beneficial to Britain because in its absence other European powers would have cut out British trade. 

There is considerable historical evidence to support the view of the West actively seeking to import goods from the rest of the world. I'm going to give some famous examples, in chronological order. 

• Christopher Colombus, on his return to Europe, wrote to the Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinard II of Aragorn and Isabella I of Castile describing what he discovered, and emphasised the benefits of the islands, including the opportunities for gold and trade. 

• The Muscovy Trading Company was chartered in England in 1555, the East India Trading Company in 1600, Dutch East India Trading Company in 1602 (in the Netherlands, not England, obviously), the French East India Company in 1664, all aiming to increase trade between their home countries, including bringing in imports. 

• The British Admiralty's secret instructions to Captain Cook (then Lieutenant) on his first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768 included instructions to note all the resources in Australia and the "Land discover'd by Tasman" [NZ], and if he encountered any natives, to be on friendly terms, "inviting them to Traffick[sic]".

• In 1839-1842, Britain went to war with China, in the first Opium War, concluded by the Treaty of Nanking, which, amongst other things, opened five treaty ports to foreign merchants. (The Second Opium war ended with a treaty including further trade provisions.)

• In 1853-54, the American President ordered the famous mission to Japan, led by the American naval officer Commodore Perry, to open Japan to trade. 

• In 1947, 23 nations signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), including France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands (a fair sampling of the West). The opening text of the GATT included as an aim: "developing the full use of the resources of the world and expanding the production and exchange of goods".

• 1995 saw the creation of the World Trade Organisation, the successor to GATT. Membership in 1995 included the West. 

All of these actions are consistent with the West seeking to increase their imports of goods and services.