https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/receding-global-capital-flows-misreading
Misreading industrial history
Part of the reason for turning inward was a particular interpretation of history. The belief that richer countries were successful because they protected manufacturing gave respectability to industrial policy. That turned out to be a misreading of history. Despite high tariffs, the United States developed as an open economy—open to immigration, capital, and technology—and one with an exceptionally large domestic market that was fiercely competitive. Furthermore, the high-tariff United States overtook free-trade Britain in per capita income in the late 19th century by increasing labor productivity in the service sector, not by raising productivity in the manufacturing sector (Broadberry 1998). In Western Europe, growth was related to the shifting of resources out of agriculture and into industry and services. Trade policies designed to protect agriculture from low prices likely slowed this transition in countries such as Germany. While across-the-board import substitution fell out of favor decades ago, the debate over industrial policy continues to this day. The experience of successful East Asian countries has given it a positive gloss, but even here standard history can mislead. In 1960, South Korea was saddled with an overvalued currency and exports of just 1 percent of GDP. The country’s ability to import depended almost entirely on US aid. After devaluing its currency in the early and mid-1960s, Korea’s exports became more competitive and exploded, reaching 20 percent of GDP by the early 1970s. The main policy involved setting a realistic exchange rate that allowed exports to flourish along with cheaper credit for all exporters, not targeted industries (Irwin 2021). Industrial policy did not really start until the Heavy and Chemical Industry Drive of 1973–79, which was later terminated because of its excessive costs and inefficiency. But Korea’s rapid growth had already been unleashed before the industrial policy era. The debate over industrial policy has long been locked in a stalemate. Some see it as essential to productivity growth and structural transformation, while others see it as abetting corruption and fostering inefficiency. Some point to Argentina’s costly attempt to promote the assembly of electronics in Tierra del Fuego, while others point to gleaming high-tech factories in China and Korea. The effects are easy to exaggerate. Quantitative models suggest that the gains from even optimally designed industrial policies are small and unlikely to be transformative (Bartelme and others 2021). What is new is that the United States has joined China in an explicit embrace of industrial policies.
Douglas Irwin for IMF