Food for a not fairly treated thought (5)
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Dr Navarro is right and he is wrong.
He is right to point out that a simple globalised liberalisation
would be disastrous for poor people in poor countries.
He is right to emphasise that developing countries must be able
to protect particular industries at particular times (from com-
petition from rich world product) if they are to have any chance
of industrialising.
Samir Amin (1985, Delinking: towards a polycentric world. Lon-
don, Zed Books) has elaborated very clearly the importance of
national protection and cultivating South-South trading blocks
protected from rich world competition. The logic of comparative
advantage applies where two countries are at comparable levels
of development. Free trade between rich and poor is much more
likely to exacerbate the inequality.
I know that Claudio is fully aware of these complexities al-
though the polemic mode can sometimes override the analytical as
I believe Vicente would appreciate.
However, Vicente is wrong to dichotomise: national power rela-
tions rather than world trade; "It is an illusion to think that
the problems of underdevelopment are due to trade barriers" (not
quite what Claudio said!). Both are critically important and
their interdependence is one of the core dynamics of imperial-
ism.