Multilateral Trading System And Trade Policies: Is Proteting In Import An Easy Task?

The issue of protecting domestic industries against competition of foreign industries is a major argument among trade policy debates. While main argument concentrates on protecting against foreigners’ unfair practices, a lot of reasons can be put forward for protection under fair competition as well. Textbooks, related with international economics and international trade are full of protective policy measures and economic analysis of them. Trade unions, employers’ unions, business NGOs and political parties still believe in that protecting domestic industries is an easy policy choice; and are exerting pressures on governments toward this direction. However, the developments, such as the increase of mutual economic dependency among countries, the internalization of production and supply chains and ever increasing recognition by almost all trading nations of the discipline of multilateral trading system since the beginning of the second half the 20th century, especially after 1980s, have made obsolete most of the policy tools of the past and their rezoning. Laid the foundation in 1948 with the enactment of the GATT and reinforced by the establishment of the WTO in 1994, multilateral trading system has disciplined the protectionism to a considerable extent. Protectionism in traditional sense is no more a trade policy tool which can easily be used today.