WTO forum

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Fri Nov 19 06:29:40 PST 1999



>A package of interviews I did on the WTO for the Nation's special
>issue on the WTO is up on the magazine's website
><http://thenation.com/>. Direct, frameless access is at
><http://thenation.com/issue/991206/1206forum.shtml>.

Looks very nice...

All of a sudden, however, I like Walden Bello less than I used to:


>Walden Bello: Often the issues that have created discontent in the
>North come across to people in the South as protectionist, in that they
>seem aimed at keeping goods from the South out of Northern markets...
>But if you look at the way that countries in the South have made
>advances in this century, it's been through protectionism... More
>recently, the so-called tiger economies in East Asia were able to
>move up the ladder with protectionism...

East Asian countries did not "move up the ladder" because the multi-fiber agreement restricted their exports. There is a profound difference between saying that developing-country growth can be aided by infant-industry protection (which is a risky strategy that often goes wrong) and implying that first-world limits on imports are really good for India.

Seems to me that Mr. Bello is not in the business of deepening the knowledge pool...

Brad DeLong



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