Salinas de Gortari had declared a NAFTA-style arrangement as "not feasible" and contrary to Mexico's short-and medium-term interests. 1 Broad explanations for this change of heart generally have focused on external factors such as debt and foreign exchange pressures and on the supposed economic superiority of liberalization. Neither yields much insight into why free trade has now become politically acceptable in Mexico; external shocks could have been addressed with trade restrictions, and the supposed benefits of free trade apparently went unrecognized by domestic policymakers for decades.In this article, we combine political and economic analysis in an attempt to account more fully for both the origins and sustainability of Mexico's commercial opening during the 1980s. After examining standard explanations of trade policy, we develop a simple model of policy choice in which institutional exclusion, asymmetric information flows, and the linkage of liberalization with macroeconomic stabilization all work to lower the perceived political costs of

For nearly a decade, Mexico has embraced a neoliberal development model based on liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation. Yet, contrary to longstanding claims in the economic development literature, this strategy has yet to produce the high levels of growth and income gains that policy-makers had projected at the outset of the reforms. This article suggests that the lacklustre response of the Mexican economy represents more than a longer-than-expected adjustment lag. Rather, through an analysis of state policy in the urban-industrial and rural-agricultural sectors of the economy, the authors locate the sources of slow growth and wage compression in : () the particular mix of policies that have been implemented under the banner of neoliberalism in Mexico ; and () the failure to properly coordinate macroeconomic stabilisation with longer-term goals of market restructuring. Arguments in favour of neoliberal reform have long held that an economic strategy based on liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation is the surest recipe for triggering higher levels of growth, productivity, and income equality." However, despite the ambitious programmes of economic adjustment and market restructuring undertaken in Latin America since the mid-to-late s, annual growth rates averaged just n % during the - period-well below the estimated  % rate that would be required for a significant improvement in employment and social equity.# Indeed, only a handful of countries have seen an increase

Simultaneous with the rise of trade protectionism in the twenty-first century has been a resurgence in nationalist politics, most notably in the USA, the UK, and parts of the EU. These developments in international and US trade policy, including Washington's launch of a full-fledged trade war against China in March 2018, have converged disastrously with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in November 2019 and the onset of a worldwide pandemic. Given the status of the USA as the world's hegemon since 1945, what is new here is the effort of the Trump administration to abdicate US leadership, jettison longstanding alliances, and turn back the clock on the country's close integration with the world economy. Already, greatly reduced flows of goods, services, and people have translated into radically reduced global growth, widespread business disruptions, and high unemployment. Remarkably, the White House has refused to recognize the severity of the pandemic and has undermined the precautions of the US science community. We argue that these multiple shocks constitute a major critical juncture on par with what the world community faced in 1945. However, in the twenty-first century we have seen that high levels of economic uncertainty and political instability have superseded the longheld notion that international interdependence would pull the world community through tough times such as these. Could the triple whammy of a destructive trade war, deadly pandemic, and secular decline of US leadership trigger a new generation of policy innovation and institution building on par with the post-1945 era? In terms of the global trade regime, it would be difficult to imagine a buoyant recovery of the world economy in the absence of a serious reckoning with the pattern of norm erosion that we identify here.

No abstract

No abstract