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5How MNEs Help Mobilize Rural Labor for Industrialization, Alleviating Poverty (as have done across East Asia):Is the “America First” Policy a Threat?Terutomo Ozawaup, raising demands for female labor. (Another aspect not specifically discussed in the Lewis model.)6 Viewed in the above light, the activation of rural labor as industrial workers is a clear indicator of a successful industrial takeoff in emerging markets. This transitional period of structural change is a necessary prelude to the subsequent growth phase of a consumer-oriented economy that relies more on domestic demand than on export demand. Full mobilization of unemployed or underemployed rural people is a necessary condition for a rise in consumption, which signals a critical transition to the next phase of growth. It is also worth stressing that the Lewis model is a theory of an industrial takeoff (i.e., the initial phase of economic development), not a theory of sustainable long-term development driven by technological advance and human/intellectual capital, the later phase of industrialization.7 In this regard, Paul Krugman (1994, 1997) makes an interesting distinction between “input (or ‘perspiration’)-driven” growth and “efficiency (or ‘inspiration’)-driven” growth.8 The Lewis model corresponds to the former, in which labor and capital (basic factors of production) are merely mobilized to raise output with the use of existing available technology (i.e., without much increased efficiency).3．East Asia’s poverty reduction, labor-driven tandem takeoffs and sustainable catch-up East Asian experiences best illustrate how labor-intensive, low-end production (mostly prompted and/or organized by foreign MNEs), has recently contributed to dire-poverty reduction in the region, meeting the first UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of poverty reduction (1990-2010), five years ahead of the 10-year deadline. According to the 2015 MDG Progress Report of Asia and the Pacific (the latest available report that uses the 2011 US$1.90-a-day PPP poverty line), as much as 60.2 percent of people in East Asia and the Pacific region lived in extreme poverty in 1990. But, in 2013 only 3.5 percent did, a great achievement exceeding any other regions’ performances and unprecedented in human history (United Nations, 2015). Furthermore, “With some of the world’s most dynamic economies, and more than half of the global population, Asia and the Pacific region has helped drive the world towards the Millennium Development Goals” (Vox Media, 2016). Yet, there are still significant differences in poverty levels among regions. Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst case followed by South Asia. (Khokhar, 2016). An important question is, then, why East Asia9 has been able to meet the MDG of poverty 6 In this connection, it should be stressed that although MNEs’ role is positive overall, their complicated supply chains, “licensed manufacturing,” and overseas subsidiaries, notably in emerging markets, are susceptible to tragic industrial accidents that severely damage host communities, as evidenced in Bangladesh’s garment industry (as suppliers to MNEs) in 2013 when several factory collapse and fires exacted a heavy toll on workers, mostly female. The worst example is the Bhopal gas-leak accident in India caused by the locally controlled subsidiary of Union Carbide in 1984, a tragedy that killed tens of thousands of people, leaving some half a million people with respiratory problems. 7 This point is emphasized and explained in terms of the notion of “the ladder of development a la Schumpeter” (Ozawa, 2016).8 Krugman (1994) also uses “total factor productivity” interchangeably with “efficiency.”9 Unfortunately, South Pacific island economies (like Tonga and Fiji) have been laggards in poverty reduction--in sharp