there is a flagrant double standard at play. Western policymakers told developing countries that they had to liberalise their economies in order to grow, but that’s exactly what the West did not do during its own period of economic consolidation. Every one of today’s rich countries developed its economy through protectionist measures. In fact, until recently, the United States and Britain were the two most aggressively protectionist countries in the world: they built their economic power using government subsidies, trade tariffs, restricted patents – everything that the neoliberal playbook
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