The world’s most renowned economist of the period, Englishman Adam Smith, who is regarded as the father of modern Capitalist theory, advised the newly independent United States of America to embrace Free Market trade policies, economic liberalization, and so on; and to dismiss the idea of protectionism, high tariffs, and boosting domestic industrialization. Alexander Hamilton, the then Secretary of the Treasury, who had no background in economics whatsoever, and who only held a liberal arts degree; disagreed. He advocated doing the opposite of Adam Smith’s advice. He advocated following the same kinds of policies England itself had actually implemented throughout its rise as a world power, rather than the policies England was recommending to the former colonies. And, of course, Hamilton was right.
Today, just as England tried to do with its newly lost colonies, the developed countries of the world are advising, recommending, and indeed forcing, all of the previously colonized nations to adopt trade liberalization, Free Markets, and so on and so forth; the exact opposite of the policies they themselves adopted in their rise to power. Unfortunately, there are very few Arab, Asian, or African Alexander Hamiltons; so the developing world has largely fallen for the trick.
All of the things the IMF is telling you to do are things the developed world refused to do, and that is how they developed. All the things the IMF tells you to change, to decrease or to discard, are policies that are part of the recipe for economic development. The US, UK, and Europe became advocates of Free Trade only after they had become powerful enough through protectionism to be able to dominate a “Free Market”.