#protectionism

#protectionism

France is a great trading nation. France is the world's sixth largest food exporter. Why are French farmers and French politicians so viscerally hostile to trade? French farmers get over 9 billion a year in subsidies from Brussels, more than any other country. And yet they oppose any EU trade agreement which would help other industries but might provide limited competition to farmers.

After a tumultuous year marked by President Donald Trump's return to the White House and his swing towards tariffs and protectionism, recent growth has outpaced the expectations of most analysts. In a speech this month, Trump hailed his economic record, insisting that the US was on the cusp of an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen.

We know that this decades-long process of our ever-closer economic relationship between Canada and the United States has ended, and as a consequence of that, many of our strengths have become our vulnerabilities, particularly in those industries that are most tightly integrated with the United States, Carney said to reporters on Ottawa's Parliament Hill on Wednesday. Carney announced that his government would put new restrictions on the amount of steel and lumber imported into Canada, in an effort to help domestic producers.

Lagarde argued that Europe was vulnerable because of a dependency on third countries for our security and the supply of critical raw materials. She cited China's control of the supply of rare earth metals that are crucial in electric motors and wind turbines, as well as the choke point of power chips made by Nexperia in China that threatened to shut down production across the global car industry.

When someone says, "Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports," it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while, it works - but only for a short time. But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars.

Three experts in the power of technology to drive economic growth have been awarded this year's Nobel prize in economics. Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University secured half of the 11m Swedish kronor (867,000) prize, with the rest split between two other academics: Philippe Aghion of the College de France, Insead business school and the London School of Economics; and Peter Howitt of Brown University.

Trade protectionism is a historical constant, as seen in Bismarck's 19th-century tariffs against wheat imports in Germany, which ultimately failed.