In well-designed microelectronics, they will.
The standard circuit involves a fuse, a fast Zener clamp, and sometimes a small resistor (e.g. 1 ohm) and/or capacitor. The design parameter is that, with the current limit from the resistor, the Zener should not blow out before the fuse.
The resistor needs to be small enough to not lose a lot of voltage under normal operations, but to still protect the Zener during the short surge during which the fuse blows. For most microelectronics, that's not hard. A 0.5W USB device might have 100mA of current max, which across 1 ohm is 100mV, so negligible for most purposes.
With high-power devices, it gets more complex.
Of course, consumer devices (a) will never be fixed (b) don't sell on this (c) every penny counts, so there's no market pressure to do things right.
But that's how we used to do it, and how it's still done many places where things count. If I'm building a one-off or few-off, it definitely will have proper protection.
Really, if you care beyond "blow the fuse if something shorts", you need active current limiting. For common cases like USB ports, you can buy chips that do it cheaply and efficiently. There are also some textbook circuits, though they each have their pros and cons. No matter what, if you've got a pass transistor or switching transistor that's about to go seriously overcurrent, you have to do something about it with active parts -- fuses aren't going to get it done.
But defense in depth is always a good strategy, and fuses play a key role there. The active circuitry saves the rest of the design; if it can't get the job done, the fuse makes sure nothing burns.
Orrr you can design your circuit to survive a short condition for a bit longer than a fuse takes to blow. For old cars this was common, let whatever is short take all the current it wants for a tenth of a second and forget about it.the battery may lose a bit of useful life but those things were gonna fail early either way.
Induction motors use overload relays to protect the motor, fuses are strictly for overcurrent protection to stop the wire from catching fire. A VFD will have a fused switch or circuit breaker on the line side for overcurrent protection and a set of overload relays after the contactor to protect the motor itself.
Switchgear uses ground fault protection relays to protect the equipment, not fuses (or humans for that matter, GFP relays are set around 30mA IIRC)
Some motors also have phase loss protection relays that will power down the motor if a utility phase is lost.
A car is the same, fuses are to protect the wiring and prevent fires. Fuses do not act quickly enough to protect equipment, even fast-acting ones.
Relays act fast enough and deterministically enough to protect equipment, fuses aren’t fast or accurate enough to do so.