15/03/29 17:44:13.22 t2hZN/2s.net
>>101の続き
One particular misuse of the yay-free-trade sentiment is the persistent
effort to make protectionism a cause of economic slumps, and trade liberalization
a route to recovery. How many times have you seen the Kindleberger “spiderweb”
chart showing declining world trade in the early years of the Great Depression,
which is then invoked as showing the evils of protectionism (slide 2)? In fact,
it shows no such thing; you can draw a similar chart for the Great Recession (slide 3),
when we know that there was no upsurge in protectionism.
The fact is that at this point trade is fairly free (slide 4), and estimates
of the cost of protectionism from standard models are quite small (slide 5).
Trade restrictions just aren’t a major drag on the world economy these days,
so the gains from liberalization must be small.