SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This paper examines various schools of trade policy reform and finds little difference between them in regards their essential export optimism. This optimism is based on an unwarranted assumption in cross-country empirical studies. In practise the increasing number of large LDC’s shifting towards export promotion since the 1980s is found to coincide with declining terms of trade for labour-intensive manufactures. So far this decline has been offset by growth in volume. The positive relation is actually dependent on market growth in developed countries rather than domestic policy reform. Marx (the Moor) provides a useful framework in which to analyse this process. His analysis of competition and accumulation within a national economy is transposed to that of international trade. Finally, the increasing integration of capital into ‘value chains’ and the formation of regional trading blocs can be related to the crisis tendencies of competition and the erosion of profit margins.