Since Jordan’s first effort in economic planning—the 5 Year Program for Economic Development (1962-1967)—policy elites have consistently defined external dependence as the most salient impediment to growth, prosperity, and national self-realization. Despite the consistency with which they have sounded this alarm, however, the policy responses produced by Jordanian planners have done little to extract Jordan from its dependent condition (and from the lower middle income trap this condition prefigures). Under King Abdullah, in fact, Jordan’s dependency has only worsened, as economic openness, business friendliness, and market-dominated trade, industrial, and investment policies have actually worsened Jordan’s terms of trade, decreased the complexity of its export basket, and left the government’s revenue strategy disproportionately reliant upon a regressive and punitive general sales tax regime. This paper will attempt to answer why Abdullah’s development and budgetary strategies have failed to deliver, both on their own terms and in terms of the larger social welfare of the Jordanian people. My argument will posit that the King’s neoliberal policy approach neglects the effects born of Jordan’s late development, of its bourgeoisie’s rent-seeking tendencies, and of its semi-peripheral position within the contemporary system of global capitalism. This neglect, in turn, insures that this market-oriented policy mix will reproduce Jordan’s dependency and underdevelopment. Using mixed methods and rigorous statistical analysis, I will first show why various FDI-dependent investment plans have primarily resulted in an influx of Gulf capital (the vast majority of which is allocated into speculative non-tradables), thereby failing to deliver the technological and knowledge-based transfers that were promised. Next turning to firm level analysis, I will demonstrate why the export-oriented enterprises being supported across a constellation of Special Economic Zones and Qualifying Industrial Zones produce neither high-sophistication goods nor decent jobs for Jordanians. Finally, combining historical class analysis with a statistical review of the investment behavior of Jordan’s domestic financial sector, I will show that the conservatism and rent-seeking tendencies of the bourgeoisie elite–an essential regime ally—continues through the present day. As banks and financial institutions continue to prefer the guaranteed (and healthy) returns of government bonds above risk-based, profit-seeking investment in productive sectors (especially in R+D), they deprive the economy of the capital needed to generate mass employment, high skilled jobs, and technological upgrading.