Bad Samaritans

Ha-Joon Chang argues in Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism that highly developed economies impose unfair and hypocritical demands on developing economies.  In particular, the nations that control the international trade and monetary agencies require that developing economies open their markets to imports, drop or lower tariffs, and basically structure their economies after the image of developed free-trade economies.

This is unfair, Chang argues, because developing economies simply cannot compete.  Koreans don’t have the technical skills to compete in an open computer market, say, with American or Japanese companies, and if the government doesn’t protect Korean companies in some fashion they will never have a chance to develop those skills.  Trade barriers are necessary “training wheels” for developing economies, keeping them profitable until they are ready to compete in a global marketplace.

More tellingly, Chang argues that these demands are hypocritical, since every developed economies did precisely what developing economies are doing when they were in the early stages of development.  American and European companies developed behind the protective barriers of trade restrictions and tariffs until they were able to flourish in an open global market.  Chang asks that the same courtesy be extended to immature economies today.