Tom Friedman's Folly: The Lies Behind 'Free Trade'

By Chalmers Johnson, Truthdig
Posted on February 5, 2008, Printed on February 5, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/75645/

Ha-Joon Chang is a Cambridge economist who specializes in the abject poverty of the Third World and its people, groups, nations, and empires, and their doctrines that are responsible for this condition. He won the Gunnar Myrdal Prize for his book "Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective" (2002), and he shared the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for his contributions to "Rethinking Development in the 21st Century." The title of his 2002 book comes from the German political economist Friedrich List, who in 1841 criticized Britain for preaching free trade to other countries while having achieved its own economic supremacy through high tariffs and extensive subsidies. He accused the British of "kicking away the ladder" that they had climbed to reach the world's top economic position. Chang's other, more technical books include "The Political Economy of Industrial Policy" (1994) and "Reclaiming Development: An Economic Policy Handbook for Activists and Policymakers" (2004).