NO TO PROTECTIONISM !

From 1929 to 1933,governments all over the world rushed to adopt self-destructive "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies, in a futile attempt to devalue each other's currencies and to reduce their imports in retaliation, forgetting that one country's imports are the other country's exports. The consequence was that the value of world trade contracted by two-thirds, going from $ 5.3 billion to $ 1.8 billion.

The world economy went down with world trade and every country was worst off as a consequence. A severe recession was then turned into a worldwide economic depression. This is because trade protectionism in the modern world is the equivalent of "cutting off your nose to spite your face" and its main consequences are to spread poverty and eonomic dislocations.

Today most modern economies are interrelated and if politicians begin to unravel such an economic integration, the conesquences may be even worst than in the 1930s, because economic integration is much more advanced and prevalent that it was then.

If the lessons of the past have been learned, governments should resist the temptation to export their economic problems abroad and should work instead to stimulate their economies without resorting to protectionist measures. What is needed now is to avoid sending the world economy into a self-reinforcing contraction that would hurt everyone.

Protectionism is the politics of defeatism, retreat and fear and in the end protects no one at all!