Talk:Infant industry argument

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It is complete nonsense to say that countries "compete" (see Krugman, P. Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession. Foreign Affairs 1994, 73(2), 28-44; [1]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.114.139 (talk) 08:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the basis of this policy is that someone in the bureaucracy has the deep wisdom to decide which industries can benefit from import duties, and which should be left alone. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"proponents / criticisms"[edit]

Is there a reason to split the article text up in this way? It is rather misleading. For example Zedillo, under "proponents," is not known as a proponent of infant industry protection; he just said that international institutions should not disallow it. HJ Chang, under the untitled first section, is known as a proponent, but he is not being cited for "pro" information (although under "proponents" his research on the historical US tariff levels is cited, even though it's just a factual claim.)

Most economists accept the theoretical argument that infant industry protection can work. They are just skeptical about the prospects of political systems actually getting the policy right, and see the risk of badly designed tariff policies as outweighing the potential benefit of well-designed tariff policies. By the same token, most of those who propose infant-industry protection are keenly aware of the potential pitfalls, rent-seeking, retaliatory tariffs, etc. So I don't like the artificial "pro/anti" dichotomy. EvanHarper (talk) 23:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]