Late industrialization in the Sustainable Development Goals: a critical perspective from the Argentine experience

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have incorporated late industrialization once more into the global development agenda. Nonetheless, the importance that is given to WTO's rules in the SDGs makes it pertinent to re-examine the debate about the 'policy space' in which developing countries pursue late industrialization. The premise in the SDGs is that WTO's rules will demarcate the policy space developing countries will have to pursue industrial policies. This article argues that the WTO could demarcate the 'policy space' only if developing countries lack access to non-conditional external finance. The accessibility of low-conditionality sources of external financing permits countries to avoid conditionalities and hence widen the space to use policy instruments inconsistent with the neo-liberal rational the SDGs industrial agenda vindicates. Argentina's re-industrialization programme (2003-2015) is used to illustrate how having access to low-conditional external finances allowed Argentina to escape WTO's rules to implement State-led industrial policies after a default.