value exports.” 180 The prevailing consequence of this was a deepening trade deficit that threatened the means for greater industrial growth, as crucial supplies of imports were jeopardised. The economist John Sheahan asserts that the “central problems” of ISI were that it “fostered product ion methods adverse for employment, hurt the poor, blocked the possible growth of industrial exports, encouraged high- cost consuming industries while impeding vertical integration and accelerated multinational entry into domestic markets.” 181 Additionally, the policy of ISI was far more applicable to the larger countries of Latin America – like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico – than the smaller ones, which suffered from a non-existent middle class and tiny local consumer markets. Consequently, they had little choice but to rely on specialising in the exportation of one or two primary product commodities. When compared to the wild success of the “Four Asian Tigers” 182 (which began their export-led industrialisation around the same time that the Latin American countries began their import substitution industrialisation), it would appear that the recommendation of state-fostered ISI is fundamentally damaging to Prebisch’s – and CEPAL’s – legacy. Despite successfully identifying the significant structural problems that plagued Latin American economies, the solutions that he and CEPAL proposed failed to eradicate those problems. Indeed, in hindsight they seem misguided – a judgment made by public opinion at the time resulting in CEPAL, such a force in the intellectual debates on Latin American development until the 1980s and Prebisch’s greatest institutional achievement, losing all of its considerable influence. Though harshly judged by their contemporaries, and more recently by neoliberal 180 Dosman, The Life and Times of Raúl Prebisch 1901-1986, page 328 . 181 Seahan, Patterns of Development in Latin America: Poverty, Repression and Economic Strategy, pages 86-87. 182 Michael Sarel, “Growth in East Asia: What We Can and Cannot Infer” International Monetary Fund, 1996
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