[hristov]

Latin America is an example how the "free market" theory as espoused by the washington consensus is very bad for developing nations. Latin America is the region that most closely follows the washington consensus and they have suffered for this mightily for this over the post ww2 years.

There were little spurts of protectionism in argentina and brasil but those happened only around the 2000s and only as a reaction after many years of gutting the countries under free market policies.

Holding China as an example of free trade success is a little wrong, to say the least. Post ww2 China has always had a very carefully crafted protectionist policies, and while they did open up majorly, they are still very protectionist by almost any sane international standard. Lets not forget that even now to start any significant business in China you need to make sure that Chinese nationals own a majority of your business.

India liberalized much more than China during the 80s and 90s, so if you want to make that comparison, India should be on the free trade side. In my opinion though the Chinese economic success in comparison to India had much more to do with domestic social policies. China simply did the best to ensure that despite wide spread poverty most people have access to education, clean water, modern medical services, modern telecom and transportation infrastructure, etc. India, on the other hand, as part of their "modernization" gutted social programs (again, listening to the Washington consensus) and they still have a vast part of their population in a more or less pre-industrial state of education and development.

[wslh]

> There were little spurts of protectionism in argentina and brasil but those happened only around the 2000s and only as a reaction after many years of gutting the countries under free market policies.

On the contrary. Brazil and Argentina are super protectionists and never had a free market economy in the last decades. Free market means entering product from other markets with a near zero tariff. For example, the price of a notebook in theses markets is 2x the price in US, and always worked like that. For an Argentinian a top of the line 13" MacBook Pro in US at USD 2k is cheap because in Argentina that will cost more than USD 4k. There were arbitrary cases (e.g. clothes) where in the 90s the imports from China broke local factories but never a free market economy but an arbitrary market economy.

[unishark]

> There were little spurts of protectionism in argentina and brasil but those happened only around the 2000s and only as a reaction after many years of gutting the countries under free market policies.

Have you tried selling software or licensing technology to companies in Latin America? In my experience you will need to double or triple your prices because pay a majority of your income in protectionist taxes.

The result is they have local companies selling some select technologies we have, and little or no access to most technology we have.

[mardifoufs]

Of course liberalization isn't magical and does not solve all economic problems. There are tons of reasons why India failed in its liberalization program, lack of focus and coherent policy being the most important ones. Now of course China is far from your standard free market, but as you said, they have been enforcing a very strict protectionist policy for most of the 20th century. And for most of the 20th century, china really was full of misery and abject poverty which is something that only ended with a relatively incredible opening to the world's markets.

I also should've been more clear, what I'm talking about is more free movement of goods than the libertarian definifion of free markets. You can import and export goods in China pretty easily, but it's a nightmare in countries like Argentina. You are (or were, until recently) also relatively safer in china, when you don't have to worry about sudden anti-business measures, tariffs, or outright death by targeted regulations

Also, protectionism in south america has a very long history [0], and was already very strongly enforced much earlier than the 2000s. The concept of protecting "Infant industry" is ingrained in much of the region's recent history. And again, the countries that are doing better right now in latin america have mode liberal trade policies. I don't understand how it's not outright obvious that latin america has shot itself in the foot multiple times with very inefficient, very populist protectionist policies that made competitiveness impossible and commodities/primary goods the only productive sectors.

[0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w8999