Protecionismo comercial e crescimento: correlacoes negativas - Antonio Tena-Junguito

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Bairoch revisited: tariff structure and growth in the late nineteenth century

ANTONIO TENA-JUNGUITO

European Review of Economic History, 2010, v. 14, n. 1, pp. 111-143.

disponível neste link: http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/10016/11674/1/bairoch_tena_EHES_2009_ps.pdf
Para os que acreditam que a proteção tarifária teria sido uma boa coisa para o crescimento dos países latino-americanos, seria útil ler todo o trabalho, especialmente este trecho: 
"By contrast, Figure 6 shows that for peripheral independent countries the relationship between tariff average and growth appears consistently negative. Politically independent poor countries had commercial policies designed by their own governments and parliaments. The European periphery and Latin America had high tariffs, especially for traditional industrial products without comparative advantage, even if some of them were linked with technologies developed from the First Industrial Revolution. From the second half of the nineteenth century many poor independent countries developed some low-skill manufactures, such as traditional textile and metal, imposing high tariffs especially in non-competitive sectors. Even if they reduced some manufacture tariffs, during the liberalization period around the 1850s and 1860s, at the beginning of 1870s they still had a level of manufacture protection that was more than threefold that of the European rich countries. During this period they developed well-established and organized lobbies which demanded high tariffs to defend national industry from the competition of rich countries’ manufactured exports. When protectionism became fashionable again in 1880s and 1890s, peripheral governments were too weak to stop rent-seeking in the economy and most of them increased manufacture tariffs in non-competitive sectors. These results could reflect both the existence of poor underlying institutions, and a negative association between protected industrial sectors and long-run growth."
O gráfico a que se refere esta passagem é este aqui, onde se pode ver que o Brasil, detentor de uma das mais altas tarifas do grupo, não foi feliz em suas taxas de crescimento, junto com outros que praticaram as mesmas políticas comerciais defensivas (na verdade, destinadas a produzir receitas para o Estado mais do que promoção industrial).

As conclusões gerais do trabalho são sempre cautelosas, como se pode ver por estes trechos selecionados: 
"In theory, there is no reason to find a systematically unambiguous association between average tariffs and growth in different groups of countries, and regional asymmetry may be partially explained by different tariff structures.
(...) an increase in protection, measured by total and manufacture tariff averages, implied more protection of unskilled and inefficient sectors and less growth, and this is especially consistent with the behaviour of poor countries in the late nineteenth century. Protection was apparently positive for the ‘rich countries club’, but had a limited impact on growth.

Comparative advantage in low-skilled sectors might be an engine for growth, therefore higher protection of those sectors might appear as a legitimate option. However, international trade theory and historical experience show that tariffs never focus on relatively low-cost sectors with comparative advantage in the present day. Tariffs in non-comparative advantage sectors in the present day may have a positive relationship with growth in the future, if high tariffs are imposed in sectors with dynamic positive externalities. Endogenous growth literature assumes that this might be the case if ‘good institutions’ succeed in controlling rent-seeking.

This works thus rejects the established view that, as a general statement, tariffs were positively associated with long-run growth in late nineteenth century, as has been maintained recently by O’Rourke (2000), Williamson (2001, 2006a), Jacks (2006). European and Latin American peripheral countries demanded high tariffs to defend national industry from the competition of manufactured imports from rich countries. Tariff structure was the result of a rent-seeking policy competition between inefficient sectors trying to defend national manufactures more than a governmental tariff import-substitution strategy. An inefficient manufacture tariff structure did not foster positive externalities at an economy-wide level, and this was especially true for the developing world. That is probably the reason why total, and especially manufacture tariffs, usually appear associated with negative growth in the world in the late nineteenth century."

Vale ler o trabalho em sua íntegra.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida