Jeffrey Williamson e Michael Clemens publicaram no último número do Journal of Iberian and Latin America Economic History/Revista de Historia Económica um belo artigo (acesso com autorização), com três questões que eles chamam de surpreendentes relacionadas à proteção comercial e às interpretações dominantes sobre as origens da industrialização na América Latina (Thomas Kang também registrou em seu blog). Os comentários se aplicam diretamente ao Brasil, que aparece com os maiores índices de proteção comercial na base de dados dos autores. Willliamson e Clemens resumem seu ponto:

“Coatsworth and one of the present authors (Coatsworth and Williamson 2004a, 2004b) recently uncovered some facts that had not been well appreciated: Tariffs in Latin America were far higher than anywhere else in the world during the decades before WW1. This was long before the Great Depression, after which the region retreated into what became known as Import Substituting Industrialisation (ISI). Indeed, tariffs were even rising in the decades before 1914, a period that has been identified by O’Rourke and Williamson (1999) the first globalisation boom for the world economy. This fact is surprising, and for three reasons: first, it comes as a surprise given that this region has been said to have exploited globalisation forces better than most of the poor periphery during the pre-1914 belle époque (Bulmer-Thomas 1994, Ch. 4); second, it comes as a surprise since standard economic histories say so little about it; and third, it comes as a surprise since most have always been taught to view the Great Depression as the critical turning point when the region is said to have turned towards protection and de-linked from the world economy for the first time (for three often cited examples, see Diaz-Alejandro 1984; Corbo 1992; Taylor 1998).”