>...What the West (And the United States in particular) believes in is 'Free' trade - which looks an awful lot like colonialism, by another name. No, that is r

>...What the West (And the United States in particular) believes in is 'Free' trade - which looks an awful lot like colonialism, by another name. No, that is really a misrepresentation of the history of trade. While it is unfortunate the amount of tariffs, restrictions, quotas, IP transfers, joint ownerships, unneeded inspections, etc. that countries use to manipulate trade, overall trade takes advantage of comparative advantage. >...Developing countries are free to sell their resources, or low-value-add, high-labour, low-IP goods, and and are free to import high-value-add, low labour, high-IP goods. 'Free' trade is a moat that protects this sort of arrangement. This sounds more like a conspiracy theory than anything else. A poor undeveloped country can hardly be expected to start out as a major manufacturer of MRI machines, but that doesn't mean trade with western countries is a conspiracy to prevent poor countries from selling high value goods. The example of Taiwan since WW II is as illustrative as any. >...Except for a few coal mines, which are thousands of feet underground, and limestone for cement plants, there are almost no valuable mineral deposits in Taiwan. The availability of arable land is also a problem. The existing amount of cultivated land, around one-third of Taiwan’s total area, cannot be increased. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6927.pdf http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6927.pdf Taiwan started out exporting only textile and other labor intensive products and now machinery, electrical equipment and computers are more than half of their exports and textiles are now a tiny part of their exports. Since WW II, international trade has not impoverished Taiwan - on the contrary it is usually credited as a reason for the large growth of the GDP in Taiwan. This growth in GDP can be seen here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RGDPNATWA666NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RGDPNATWA666NRUG