crony capitalism in the five

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Jul 16 08:50:21 PDT 1999


W. Kiernan wrote:


>Where they speak of a "free trade relationship," are they not talking
>about a state of affairs where Yugoslavia just boards up their bombed
>car factory (which they bought off of Italy, by the way, an American
>"Yugo" is an old model Fiat) forever and resigns itself to importing
>cars and exporting, I don't know what, something cheap, simple and low,
>like the pork they used to export a century back...

Their planned destiny is suggested by this phrase in the excerpt you quoted: "Wage costs are sufficiently low in the '5' to afford adequate opportunities for cost competitiveness." What's left of the former Yugoslavia shouldn't think about trying to use tariffs and other protective devices to build up its own industry; it should be content to be a low-wage export platform - Germany's Mexico, in other words.

Doug



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