Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Keeping focus after the WTO

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Krugman and Rodrik are on that side of the argument. A whole bunch of
>other people are on the other side. (I tend to lean toward the
>anti-Kruman-Rodrik side: without trade how can you buy the capital
>goods from the industrial core that embody so much of technology?

buying machinery from the core countries doesn't automatically allow the
buyer to access the technology. Intellectual property laws prevenet that.
One can get benefits from that technology, but one also has to pay
royalties for its use. Why do you assume that the costs are less than the
benefits?

>without trade who in the industrial core will get excited about
>teaching you how to raise your technology level?

this is way too abstract. What in heck do you mean by "trade," Walt --
oops, I mean -- Brad?

There are at least two different ways for capitalist countries to deal with
international trade in order to try to promote industrialization.

1) import-substituting industrialization (in simple terms, protection of
infant industries)
2) export-competing state-guided capitalism.
3) passive "open your markets and hope for the best" free-trade.

Places like Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan restricted trade in order to
industrialize, following path #2. However, they didn't follow the
import-substituting industrialization route (since they conditions that
allowed the US to follow that route so successfully didn't apply to those
countries well. Rather, those countries structured their restriction of
trade in a way that allowed them to build up industry to allow it to fight
and win the battle of international trade.

Of course, these countries benefited from land reform, efforts to promote
mass education of the populace, a willingness by the US to allow heterodox
policies in order to make these "front-line states" look good compared to
the commies, abundant world aggregate demand especially during the
formative years of the 1950s and 1960s, and US military spending and aid.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx & http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine