From Neomercantilism to Free Trade And Back
From Neomercantilism to Free Trade And Back

Author(s): Marjan Svetličič
Subject(s): Economy, Supranational / Global Economy, Economic history
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: free trade; protectionism; neomercantilism; industrial policy; hypocrisy
Summary/Abstract: The article evaluates the evolution of protectionism from neomercantilistic time to today’s resurgence of defensive protectionism. It starts with the theoretical framework, and proceeds by evaluating the changing global context which influenced the evolution of attitudes regarding protectionism. As soon as the catching up country achieve high level of development, they throw away protectionist ladder and start “preaching” free trade to less developed countries. The visible hand of governments’ protectionism and its strong role started to be substituted with the invisible hand logic with low governments’ input. Now, they have returned to intensive use of protectionism combined with offensive industrial policy regarding not only trade but also FDI and services/intellectual property rights as the defence instrument against rising China. Such hypocritical turnaround will be critically evaluated in the concluding remarks.

• Details
• Contents