Liberalization of the International Trade and Economic Growth: Implications for Both Developed and Developing Countries
By Vlad Spanu
Published by the Center for International Development at Harvard University, USA , 2003
Abstract
The debate over trade liberalization is part of a larger debate that deals with the impact on the economic growth of free movement of goods, capital and labor force across borders. Most economists agree that trade liberalization could positively affect economic growth, but the differences are at what stage of development a country should open its market. The paper describes different views that form the world trade policy mosaic.
Then, I show contradictions in trade policies of the developed countries while convincing poor nations to lift trade barriers, but, in the same time, they adopt anti-dumping procedures and protectionist policies on agricultural products, textiles, and steel imported from developing countries. The liberalization of trade has been pushed by international organizations mostly towards developing countries through structural adjustment loans conditionalities of the World Bank and IMF, within the World Trade Organization negotiation framework.
This paper addresses the changes, in the last year or so, within international organizations regarding trade liberalization policies. There is more understanding in the world now that industrialized countries’ protectionist trade policies are on the expense of developing countries, in particular of the least developed countries. International organizations started to shift their focus from imposing liberalization of trade in developing countries to eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers in developed countries, especially in Quad countries—Canada, the EU, Japan, and the United States.
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