Defensive Nationalism by B. S. Rabinowitz;

Author:B. S. Rabinowitz;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2023-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

State Protectionism

The rediscovery of national society was as much a state process as it was a civil society movement. As Polanyi observed, one of the first manifestations of the “double movement” was protectionist policies. In both periods, protectionism materialized just when international integration and the new global economy were beginning to emerge. In fact, they came in tandem.

Nineteenth Century

It did not take long to recognize that global liberalism posed a threat to industry, farmers, and workers. Almost as soon as international trade had been liberalized, anti-trade tariffs, particularly of grain, were instituted across Europe in the late 1870s and 1880s.40 By 1890, even the United States had adopted stringent protectionist policies.

In Europe, open trade was especially harmful to the interests of the landed nobility and large industrialists who were powerful enough to pressure their governments to enact legislative protections. Two of the first countries to erect trade barriers had actually been early adopters of the new free-trade agreements: Germany and Italy. As early as 1851, the Piedmontese government in Italy began to lower tariffs and liberalize their trade policies. By 1863 the kingdom had even signed a free-trade agreement with France.41 Similarly, in the early 1870s, Otto von Bismarck established the new German Reich “on free trade principles and low tariffs.”42

However, the “grain invasion” from the United States provoked a reversion to protectionism. As Rodrik explains:

The transport revolutions and tariffs resulted in an influx of grains from the New World and sharply lower prices. Everywhere on the Continent agricultural interests clamored for protection, often making common cause with industrialists who were reeling under competition from the more advanced British producers (and increasingly from American exporters too) onward.43

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