Why manufacturing-led export still matters for the poor countries

With the spectre of deglobalisation looming large, developing economies are scrambling to devise new growth strategies. The most effective path to development in recent history — specialising in export-oriented, unskilled labour-intensive manufacturing — now appears to be blocked. The model that once propelled the economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China, and Vietnam is becoming less accessible for countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

 

What made the traditional development model so successful was its reliance on exports, which enabled countries like South Korea to tap into virtually unlimited global demand, freeing them from the constraints implied by narrow domestic markets. Another key strength of the manufacturing-led growth model was that it ensured productivity gains were aligned with available labour resources, largely owing to the learning-by-doing dynamic that enabled countries to boost efficiency within existing sectors while gradually moving up the value chain. Economies could start with low-productivity exports and, as the workforce became more educated, shift to more skill-intensive export sectors. Consequently, growth was both rapid and inclusive, and thus more sustainable.

 

But those days are long gone, or so it seems. As the world braces for an era of protectionism and deglobalisation, two alternative development strategies have come to the fore. The first, proposed by Rohit Lamba and Raghuram G Rajan, suggests that developing countries — India in particular — should focus on skill-intensive exportable services. While their proposal retains some of the advantages of the old manufacturing-led model — tapping into global demand and promoting efficiency — its biggest drawback is that only a minuscule fraction of the workforce can directly benefit from it. Even India — the posterchild for this strategy among developing countries— employed less than 2.5 per cent of its workforce in the sectors that could be considered skill-intensive and tradable in 2024.

 

The second strategy, proposed by Dani Rodrik and Rohan Sandhu, contends that the window for labour-intensive exports has narrowed dramatically, and that AI and automation will further erode manufacturing’s ability to generate new jobs. In response, they advocate focusing on productivity gains in non-tradable services. The limitations of such a strategy are twofold. For starters, new technologies are just as likely to displace workers in non-tradable service sectors as they are in manufacturing. Moreover,  non-tradable services are not uniformly low-skilled. Some sectors — such as telecommunications and finance — are highly skilled and productive. By contrast, sectors like retail and caregiving are more accessible to unskilled workers but tend to have limited potential for productivity growth. This dynamic, famously captured by the so-called Baumol effect, means that non-tradable services are unlikely to become engines of sustained, inclusive economic growth in the way that manufacturing once did.

 

So, where does this leave developing countries? Surprisingly, while the traditional manufacturing-led strategy is not as effective as it once was, it remains a viable path for today’s poor countries— provided that middle-income countries vacate the export space they currently dominate.  Simple arithmetic helps illustrate this point. For example, Brazil, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico account for about two-thirds of low and mid-skilled manufacturing exports, which amounted to about $5.3 trillion in 2023. Over the coming decade, rising wages and geopolitical shifts will likely push these countries to move up the value chain or reduce their reliance on exports altogether.

 

Such a shift could open up space for low-income countries to step in. If they were able to capture even half of the vacated export markets, along with a share of China’s growing domestic demand, which we estimate to be at least a half-trillion dollars, they could more than double their current exports to $2-2.5 trillion.

 

And if low-income countries can do this, it could create 50-60 million new jobs in their economies — even if the employment potential of export-led manufacturing is only half of what it once was due to labour-displacing technological change. For perspective, China’s 150 million manufacturing workers helped raise living standards for 1.4 billion people.

 

Admittedly, the path has become more challenging — particularly for countries that rely heavily on the US as a trading partner. But that does not make the manufacturing-led growth model obsolete. Instead, it underscores the need for strategic adaptation. Poor countries must diversify their trade relationships and engage more with middle-income economies to nudge them to vacate the export markets that low-income economies could enter. Deglobalisation and technological change have accelerated the search for viable alternatives to export-led development. But a sober assessment reveals a difficult trade-off: High-skilled exportable services may offer dynamism or durability but not broad inclusion, while non-tradable services offer inclusion but limited dynamism. Even if the growth miracles of China, South Korea, and Taiwan can no longer be fully replicated, the traditional strategy of focusing on unskilled, labour-intensive manufacturing exports remains a promising path — and may still offer the best chance of achieving shared prosperity in the world’s poorest regions.  The authors are, respectively, senior lecturer in economics at the University of Kent and former chief economic advisor to the government of India

 

©The Project Syndicate, 2025