The trade policy of the US throughout the 19th century was one of heavy protectionism. Hamilton and Carey were our guides, not Smith and Say, and this led to the US becoming a world power. Other rising powers - like Germany in the late 19th, early 20h century, Japan in the 1960s, and China today - rose the same way. Which economies in the developing world have been most successful? The statist East Asian Tigers. No economic power has ever risen through free trade. Free trade is advocated by the strongest economies once they've reached the pedestal because it opens up markets to their superior goods.


I agree with you Putin, for the most part. The IMF and World Bank have in years past been chiefly tools of the developed world to keep the poor countries down with forcibly opened markets exposed to speculative foreign capital.

But in the USA, protectionism would literally kill us. It's one thing to use it to develop home industry, and quite another to use it save jobs or some uncompetitive tripe.

+1 Putin, thanks for fleshing that argument, that was interesting.

I think that in the long term, comparative advantage helps everyone, including poor countries. I would like to see a hard example of a developing country where free trade hurt the country more than it helped. While there are plenty of developing nations in trouble, these problems can't just be chalked up to the core nations abusing the periphery. The world isn't that black and white, and the economic game isn't zero sum.

I'm also under the impression that the Asian Tigers, though with more authoritative political styles, grew out of aggressive trade rather than protectionism. China, too, has achieved economic growth only after abandoning many of its more socialist policies. Furthermore, characterizing developing countries as a whole as exporters of agricultural products seems to be extremely misleading given the fact that most are net importers of food.

I'm not trying to suggest that foreign investment and trade are always good, or that exploitation never happens, just that trade in general is a positive thing for all parties involved, and in the long run a free trade policy will help developing nations.

I doubt we're going to reach any sort of agreement on this issue, Putin, since our views appear to be dichotomously opposed on the central issues.

Sorry about the delayed response, I didn't look at the forum very much today.

@youradhere

The fact that they're net importers of food shouldn't matter. If a country follows comparative advantage as you say and only grows...lets say bananas and sugar. Yes, they're still net importers of food because they have to import everything else, but still a natural disaster will ruin their economy