Highlights from Bad Samaritans 🌱

• WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc. are dominated by powerful/wealthy countries that benefit from having developing countries open up free trade.
  • When offering aid to developing countries, these organizations propose (and sometimes stipulate) that these countriess must adopt policy changes that benefit the wealthy countriess and not the ones receiving the aid. For example, the IMF makes conditional loans to countries with the condition that they can control the countries’ economics and enforce policies that work to benefit wealthier countries.
• The author argues that there isa misconception that opening the entire world to free trade is the optimal economic solution for all countries and people

Examples of Protectionist Policies Succeeding

• South Korea quadrupeled its per capita income in 40 years compared to US which took 150 years and the UK which took 200 years. South Korea went from having a per capita income < 1/2 of Ghana’s to
• In 1721 Britain adopted protectionist policies of tariffss on imports, subsidies on exports
  • The British also made sure to ban producing high tech goods in American colonies and make them center their production on materials and low tech goods so that they couldn’t compete with British economy which was producing high tech products at the time.
• Japense had protectionist policies in the 1950s which spurred their growth
• Chinese policy devalued their currency to encourage exports and limit imports, which seems to have led them to be a manufacturing superpower in today’s world.