Out of the Samuelson Trap : Building an Open Economy in the Post-Globalization Era

Although the Thucydides trap is often used to predict a dark future of the US-China relations, the Samuelson trap is a more useful concept to understand the international economic foundation underlying this potential tragic outcome of international politics. In order to avoid the Thucydides trap, China needs to get out of the Samuelson trap first. The fact that China fell into the Samuelson trap is partly due to its blind belief in the comparative advantage theory that explains international trade purely in terms of factor endowments. A better path for China is to get informed by the literature on international political economy that analyzes how trade liberalization affects domestic politics, and adjust the distribution of trade interests with its trading partners