http://www.rushfordreport.com/WSJArticles/TearingDownTradeBarriers.htm There’s a great article in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review about how Washington—which in 2001 convinced Vietnamese officials (“reared on Marxist-Lenist economics”) to sign a free-trade agreement—are now allowing Vietnam to sell only $US1.7bn of clothing to the U.S. each year. (This because whilst in 2001 Vietnam sold only $50m to the U.S., this increased to $950m in 2002, and was expected to hit $2.4bn this year—the author noted that the Vietnamese were simply doing what poor nations traditionally do: “sew their way out of poverty, as quickly as possible.”)
I hope that article makes it to Rushford’s archive; I haven’t been able to find it online anywhere. Anyway, the above article is good too, and describes how many poor countries pay more in tariffs than many rich countries. For example, last year Cambodia paid $152m in tax on exports of $964m, whilst Singapore paid $96m on $14.8bn of exports. 11:05
