everything's really ok

[Patrick Bond]

Right on, Doug. About five years ago, when I last had a sense of 
Mexican maquiladores and other EPZs, which are the driver of exports 
(plus the 1994-95 currency crash), I recall that the internal 
linkages to the rest of the economy were (aside from labour inputs) 
around 2%; i.e., 98% of inputs were foreign sourced. Where's the 
"development"?


> Brad DeLong wrote:
> >Consider, however, a Mexico that did *not* have access to the U.S. 
> >market. Given the rate of increase of Mexico's labor force, what 
> >would the labor market look like if exports *had not* risen from $61 
> >billion in 1994 to $150 billion in 2000?


> All other things being equal, it's better that Mexico have access to 
> the U.S. market than not. But why should we accept the other things 
> being equal? What would be best for Mexicans is an internally rather 
> than externally oriented development - housing, schools, 
> infrastructure, clinics, real industrialization rather than the 
> maquila sort.
> Doug
Patrick Bond (pbond at wn.apc.org)
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