What is import-substituting industrialization?

Question

Why did it fail in the Middle East?

please answer in a short answer

Answer 1

A thoroughly discredited approach once very popular in Latin America..The basic idea is that instead of concentrating on your comparative advantage (which may be in raw materials) and exporting that stuff to the rest of the world, you create industries to produce substitutes for what you import.  The idea was that somehow this would make you less dependent on the rich countries of the world, who were paying you little for your raw materials and charging you a lot for manufactured goods made from your raw materials. Brazilian example: instead of selling coffee to the rest of the world, and using the proceeds to buy cheap computers from countries with a comparative advantage in them, you erect a tariff wall that keeps out cheap computers so your own inefficient computer industry can have the domestic market. In theory, over time your industry will become efficient and competitive. More likely is that you will have expensive low quality computers, and you will still need to import the raw materials to make computers. And protected industries tend to stay protected.