Talk:Export-oriented industrialization

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Lack of historic evidence

The article states that (a) "Export-led growth implies opening domestic markets to foreign competition in exchange for market access in other countries", while saying that (b) "Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore in the post World War II period" are examples of countries where export-oriented industrialization happened. The two statements are contradictory, since South Korea and other East Asian countries had strong barriers on imports during most of the 1960s-1980s.

Also, as pointed out in the article about import substitution industrialization, in most cases export-oriented industrialization was not a "choice" but simply a consequence of U.S. open market policies and financial support to the industrialization of the Asian Tigers in order to create a "contention belt" of capitalist nations around commmunist countries in Asia. Since the same policies were not extended to Latin America and Africa, which were outside the areas of geopolitical concern for the U.S., they did not have the "choice" of centering their production on exports (as neither did East Asian countries), since you do not choose whether your export target (the U.S.) will open its market (that is a sovereign national decision).

I included the "The neutrality of this article is disputed" sign until this problem is solved. Abueno97 (talk)

First off, those two statements are not contradictory - you just disagree with one of them. It's true that many of the Asian Tigers maintained high trade barriers during this time period, and that should definitely be noted in the article. However, their overall trade strategy is still far closer to the EOI model than the ISI model - mainly just by virtue of their focus on an finished goods export-based economy, rather than a self-sufficient one. The fact that they got away with strong tariffs is mostly due to the other thing you point out - that the US had other priorities at the time, and thus were less worried about these countries playing "by the rules" than they were containing Communism. So yes, they didn't follow this strategy exactly, but they still deserve mention here because they're still closer to it than ISI. I'm a bit curious why you didn't just edit the article to reflect this (and I don't think "neutrality" is the thing you're really disputing here - you just think it's wrong, not biased), but no matter - I'll get around to fixing it soon.129.171.49.92 (talk) 20:15, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Comparative disadvantages explain why US policies were not extended to Africa

It is clear to me that the reason why the U.S. would have supported the industrialisation of the “Asian Tigers” and not of Africa is basically a case of the comparative disadvantage in agriculture of East Asia owing to its highly mountainous terrain and high population densities. East Asia is less responsive in relative crop yield to improved fertilisers (soils already are well-equipped with nutrients) and machinery (dangerous to use on steep terrain where inefficient terracing was normal) that the geologically older, flatter continents of Australia, Africa and “Guianan” South America. Under the condition of a primitive labour-inefficient farming economy with increasing comparative disadvantage in its main employment sector, the potential for extremes of poverty and political unrest in East Asian can readily be imagined.

Like Western Europe but to an even greater degree, East and Southeast Asia had no hope of escaping poverty but to industrialise, whereas Africa with its abundant flat land could have gained much more from the “Green Revolution” but for entrenched European and East Asian farm subsidies and at least theoretically become much wealthier per capita.

Latin America is a more interesting case since large parts, especially of Central America (Guatemala and El Salvador) are very densely populated and would be expected to suffer from the same comparative disadvantage in agriculture – perhaps this is minimised by year-round frost-free seasons and the fact that Central America has more fertile soils than Southeast Asia and vastly better soils than sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps the U.S. just did not have the resources to fund export-led growth in Latin America and felt it had more to lose from Western Europe and East Asia. Alternatively, it might have felt other means of control (coups and military juntas) could do the job as they could not in Western Europe or East Asia.

The question of why Latin America never participated fully in either the first or second “waves” of the Industrial Revolution has long been a perplexing one for me. luokehao (talk), 9 December 2015, 02:16 (UTC)

Removal of line

I removed the line "Of course this is a level playing field that starts with a giant slope favouring those already in control" because it seemed to violate WP:NPOV qitaana 23:04, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Export-led growth

Many economists have argued that Japan's growth was not, in fact, export led. Industrialization was not the result of an increasingly developed export sector, but vice-versa. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.161.98.94 (talk) 19:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

If anyone has sufficient knowledge on the subject, it would be worth discussing the effects of export-oriented industrialization on Latin America. Also, Japanese industrialization was largely dependent on silk exports from cottage industry, as understand things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.54.49.93 (talk) 23:16, 30 April 2008 (UTC)