See also Veronique de Rugy, “New Protectionism: Still Protectionism and Bad Economics,” Mercatus Center, November 6, 2019.
Editor, Wall Street Journal
1211 6th Ave.
New York, NY 10036Editor:
Reviewing Soumaya Keynes’s and Chad Bown’s How to Win a Trade War, Theodore Bunzel repeats the popular claim that South Korea “used [trade] barriers to turbocharge manufacturing in the postwar era” (“‘How to Win a Trade War’ Review: The Times of Tariffs,” July 6). But as shown by Arvind Panagariya, this claim is false: The Korean economy grew faster when it was more open and had less government direction of industry than when it was more closed and saddled with industrial policy. In his data-rich 2019 book, Free Trade and Prosperity, Professor Panagariya concludes that “once we look at the evidence carefully, Korea supports the case for outward orientation rather than protection, interventionism, and infant industry protection.”*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030* Arvind Panagariya, Free Trade & Prosperity: How Openness Helps the Developing Countries Grow Richer and Combat Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2019), page 232.
