THE ROLE OF TRADE POLICY IN ENSURING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY: MODERN APPROACHES

Аннотация

This article analyses current approaches to the role of the state and its foreign trade policy in the formation of national competitiveness, and presents the author's matrix of modern schools studying thisdirection in economics. Key words:national competitiveness; foreign trade policy; roleof thestateinthe economy. To replace the classical theories of competitiveness in modern economic science, new studies of this phenomenon have begun to appear. The scientists actively working in this field include Michael Porter, Paul Krugman, Horst Siebert, Erik Reinert and others. One of the leading modern economists in the field of competitiveness research is the American scientist Michael Porter. It was he who proposed one of the most comprehensive concepts of firm competitiveness and suggested strategies to improve it, as well as developed the concept of clusters used to analyse theposition ofthe national economy in international markets. In his further work, M. Porter paid special attention to government regulation and other conditions within the country that affect enterprises in any industry, and came to the unambiguous conclusion that the level of development of a country has a significant impact on the success of companies in the international market. His research was designed to provide an understanding of the role of the state in the competitive field of the world market and to show howcompetitiveness is formed and maintained. М. Porter says that competitiveness is a property characteristic of specific sectors of the national economy, not the country as a whole. The state influences a firm's ability to succeed in a particular international market. At the same time, it does not have its own interests directly in the market and should deal exclusivelywith theproblems of sustainableeconomic development. In Porter's understanding, the concept of competitiveness at the country level is the concept of increasing the productivity of resource utilisation. The growth of the level of welfare of the population directly depends on the return per unit of resources spent by national companies. The need for constant productivity growth arises as a result of international competition, or ‘productivity’competition between countries. In general, Porter advocated minimal government intervention in the market or international trade and urged the government to work exclusively on creating conditions for a highly productive economy (through education, infrastructure, stimulating innovation, regulating the legal relations ofmarket actors, ensuring thedistribution and respect ofproperty rights, etc.). Through international trade and competition, firms can allocate resources to the most efficient niches, reducing the cost of supporting less efficient industries. However, the problem of an absolute productivity standard arises, whereby the efficiency of one industry within a country relative to others does not guarantee thecountry's competitiveness in theinternational market. To achieve efficiency on the world market, firms must initially have a comparative advantage in some area (and based on Ricardo's theory, almost all countries have a relative advantage), and then use it to develop other promising areas and achieve maximum productivity through increasingly narrow specialisation, which is what government policy is designed tohelp achieve. page483 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ISSN:2692-5206,ImpactFactor:12,23 AmericanAcademicpublishers,volume05,issue02,2025 Journal: https://www.academicpublishers.org/journals/index.php/ijai The idea of competitiveness as an increase in the productivity of resource utilisation is also put forward by the American economist Paul Krugman. He sharply criticises the classical ideas that states should compete in creating economic conditions for attracting foreign business and increasing foreign trade surplus. He cites examples according to which the growth of exports or foreign investment in the economy does not always lead to an increase in the welfare of the country's inhabitants, although it contributes to an increase in profits. P. Krugman also argues that the success of a state depends only on the efforts of its authorities and citizens, but not on external factors or onhowsuccessful other countries become. In contrast to P. Krugman, German economist Horst Siebert advocates the idea of competition between locations for mobile factors of production: highly educated labour, capital and technology. The task of governments, accordingly, is to create institutional conditions for attracting and retaining such factors of production in order to increase national welfare, as well as to find a balance in regulating their export in order to benefit from such movement and simultaneously avoid degradation of the national economy. H. Siebert favours liberal trade and sees the role of the state as a guarantor of low transaction costs in the movement of factors of production. International cooperat