This thoughtful defense of protectionism is all the more interesting because it was written last year by a British author who argues that England has been savaged by globalist free trade and should protect more sectors of its economy. England should serve a warning to all "free traders." Here is a cogent excerpt from the article:
External trade should be mutually beneficial. In practice the degree of its being really ‘free’ or equal, as opposed to limited in some way, reflects a country’s situation and its interests. There are many areas where we could agree on mutually advantageous arrangements with our friends, some of whom are in a similar situation to ourselves. Putting up selective tariffs for many other goods and services from elsewhere is not going to cause lasting harm to total global demand, and trade will always continue. It is a matter of proportion, but the priority must be to increase self-sufficiency, and it should be only one part of a national economic strategy to improve productivity as well as production. It is hard to see how any country like the UK, in such dire straits through decades of economic mismanagement, could possibly be any worse off if we started to take a rather more nationalistic view of our self-interest.
We protect agriculture. Subsidies reduce prices and ensure standards, but they also give jobs. If we want to see cows in fields and the countryside managed well, then we’d better carry on protecting it.
So why not also strategic manufacturing, or energy generation, or London property, or British companies? Other countries do, by hook or crook. Why is it always us who seem to think we have to let everybody else plunder our home market and take over the very means of production and wealth on which we and our descendants depend? Is it a warped sense of noblesse oblige? (A CASE FOR PROTECTIONISM - UKIP Daily | UKIP News | UKIP Debate)
