By- Apoorv Srivastav
The engine of the global economy has started to stagnate. One of the biggest arguments that favors this statement is that the export led growth is no more feasible. The export led growth pioneered by Germany and Japan in 50’s and 60’s was further adopted by the Four Asian Tigers: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, before finally getting implemented by China in early 90’s. The export-led growth rose to eminence in the late 70s, replacing the import-substitution model and was a prominent global economic factor for the following four decades.
The fall of export led growth
Currently, US economy is debt saturated and still struggling to recover from the crash of 2008, and Europe is also constrained by fiscal austerity and Brexit. Export has lost its feasibility as buyers themselves are struggling. And the impact of which can be seen from Bank of Japan adopting negative interest rates & European Central Bank (ECB) implementing Quantitative Easing (QE) to increase the domestic consumption by reducing its lending rate 10 basis points to -0.4%.
Secondly, Emerging Market (EM) economies have become a larger share of the global economy, increasing from 39.1 percent in 1980 to 57 percent in 2014 and their collective export is not letting the industrialized economies recover, leading to the economic tension between EM and Industrialized nations.
For EM country, export led growth would have been a safe bet, but the recessionary condition of the US and Euro market is making hard to find buyers. This proves export led model is critically dependent on the global economy, and any global crisis will affect the economy directly.
The competition has increased with many EM countries following the same model. One of such methods is ‘Currency devaluation’ which countries like China and Japan are using to boost their exports and seeking trade advantage over other countries.
Though export led growth proved to be a sound strategy for Asian countries, but it was not the case everywhere. Mexico, whose GDP growth was 6.4% during 1950-80, reducing to 2.6% for 1980-2008 and finally 1.1% in 2013 because of export led growth model.
To conclude, we can say that the export led economy has lost its feasibility for EM and is posing a risk to the global economy. Countries need to recalibrate and shift from the export led growth to the demand led growth, with a greater role of domestic and regional demand.
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