Protection Versus Free Trade

How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used.

"Through a combination of text, quotations, cartoons, tables, charts, and graphs, Bhagwati ... looks at the forces for and against protection."--Jacket.

Excerpt from Protection Versus Free Trade The following pages are the result of a friendly challenge to me by an eminent Professor of Political Economy in a New England college to investigate that science, especially its teaching in relation to protective tariffs. The challenge was accompanied by the confident prediction: "If you pursue it to any length, you will certainly come to throw overboard, with scorn, the Pennsylvania notion that the way to grow rich is to stop, by law, profitable production"; together with the Professor's formulated conclusion: "Protection, poisonous in every root and fiber, droops and dies the moment the light of common sense and rational inquiry falls upon it." Layman though I was, I could not well refuse to take up the gauntlet thus thrown down by the Professor. In the intervals of business engagements I have undertaken the investigation. It has been done with reasonable thoroughness, and, so far as I know, with impartiality and freedom from desire of controversy. If it betrays a controversial spirit, it is because it is provoked; and even that may add something of interest to a discussion otherwise rather dry and abstract. What "common sense" and faculty of "rational inquiry" I possessed have been fairly given to the work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Free trade, indeed economic globalization generally, is under siege. The conventional arguments for protectionism have been discredited but not banished. And free trade faces strong new challenges from a variety of groups, including environmentalists and human rights activists as well as traditional lobbies who wrap their agendas in the language of justice and rights. These groups, claiming a general interest and denouncing free trade as a special interest of corporations and other capitalist forces, have organized large and vocal protests in Seattle, Prague, and elsewhere. Based on his acclaimed Stockholm lectures and picking up where his widely influential Protectionism left off, Jagdish Bhagwati applies critical insights from revolutionary developments in commercial policy theory--many his own--to show how the pursuit of social and environmental agendas can be creatively reconciled with the pursuit of free trade. Indeed, he argues that free trade, by raising living standards, can serve these agendas far better than can a descent into trade sanctions and restrictions. After settling the score in favor of free trade, Professor Bhagwati considers alternative ways in which it can be pursued. Chiefly, he argues in support of multilateralism and advances a withering critique of recent bilateral and regional free trade agreements (including NAFTA) as preferential arrangements that introduce growing chaos into the world trading system. He also makes a strong case for "going it alone" on the road to trade liberalization and endorses the reemergence of unilateral liberalization at points around the globe. Forcefully, elegantly, and clearly written for the public by one of the foremost economic thinkers of our day, this volume is not merely accessible but essential reading for anyone interested in economic policy or in the world economy.