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Sally, Razeen --- "Global Trade Policy in the New Century" [2009] ELECD 387; in Yueh, Linda (ed), "The Law and Economics of Globalisation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: The Law and Economics of Globalisation

Editor(s): Yueh, Linda

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845421953

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Global Trade Policy in the New Century

Author(s): Sally, Razeen

Number of pages: 41

Extract:

5. Global trade policy in the new
century
Razeen Sally

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored . . .
is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established
. . . Not only the prejudices of the publick [sic], but what is much more uncon-
querable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. (Adam
Smith, Wealth of Nations)

It tells them of freedom, and how freedom was won, and what freedom has
done for them, and it points the way to other paths of freedom which yet lie
open before them. (John Bright, on the repeal of the Corn Laws)



INTRODUCTION

In the last six decades, expanding international trade and capital flows
have progressively reintegrated the world economy in ever more complex
ways. Policy and technological innovation have combined to produce
what we now call economic globalisation. Post-1945 trade policy has been
a constant battle between freer-trade and protectionist forces. Generally,
liberalisation has been the trend, but it has coexisted uneasily with varie-
ties of protectionism that have always assumed new and potent forms.
Free traders, in the spirit of John Bright's stirring words, were at their
most optimistic in the 1980s and 1990s, when liberalisation spread fast
across the developing world and the ex-command economies. Since then
a note of caution and pessimism has set in, echoing perhaps the sober
Scottish realism of Adam Smith.
This chapter tries to make sense of trade-policy developments in ...