you write: > ...Isnīt "infant-industry promotion, buttressed by trade restrictions" the only way any country has ever industrialised ,including all of Southeast Asia and India, or am I way off here?<
I don't think S. Korea, Taiwan, or Japan made it as far as they did based on import substitution, which at least in Latin America meant a nation-centric effort at development. It's more accurate to say that they used protection in order to build up the basis for fighting and (at least temporarily) winning the battle of exporting. (Nation-centric development involves, for example, high domestic wages to provide a home market. This is much less important to the East Asian "model.") > Also it seems to me that in many ways the import substitution regime in Latin America, however flawed, seemed to progress at a faster pace than the current neoliberal model.< maybe, but for better or for worse the genie is out of the bottle and it's hard to reverse the neoliberal move away from import substitution. Jim Devine
