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Towards a Trade Policy for Development: The political Economy of South Africa’s External Trade, 1994-2014
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South Africa’s external trade policy and level of openness to the world economy occupies an increasingly prominent position in political economy debates about the country’s growth and development path. The government’s most auspicious economic policies — namely the National Development Plan (National Planning Commission 2011), the New Growth Path (Economic Development Department 2010), and the National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) and its annual Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007) — all call for more ‘developmental’ trade policies to shift the structure of the economy onto a more sustainable, diversified and labour absorbing industrial development path. The government’s focus on a more strategic trade policy stands in contrast to the immediate post-apartheid years, when extensive tariff and trade reforms were pursued without any overarching industrial policy framework.
The trade liberalisation project of the 1990s that initially drove
South Africa’s post-apartheid global economic re-integration has now stalled amid growing liberalisation scepticism and de-industrialisation concerns. Whereas trade liberalisation was complementary to the austere macro-economic reform agenda of the initial post-apartheid years, industrial policy considerations have been the hallmark of the second decade of democracy. These measures, designed to strengthen and diversify South Africa’s productive capabilities rather than outwardoriented reforms, continue to provide the overarching framework for South Africa’s external trade agenda and negotiations. This emphasis on more development-oriented trade policies reflects sensibilities by the governing tripartite alliance led by the African National Congress (ANC) and a progressive global epistemic community that more strategic trade and tariff policies are instrumental for achieving industrial development (UNCTAD 2006; UNCTAD 2014). This view is consistent with the structural transformation experiences of the East Asian and other lateindustrialising developmental states (Amsden 2001; Chang 2002).
This article critically reviews the evolution of South Africa’s trade policy …
Access and download the full University of Pretoria paper, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, Vol 36, No 2, here: http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/46/1322/06%20Vickers%20pp%2057-79.pdf