Rising Tide of Protectionism

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Victims of imnort controls AGAIN and again we hear import controls proposed is an answer to economi irisis, as if they were something new Yet widespread import controls are already in force. About half of EEC imports are of products on which it has contruis of some sort. The corresponding figure for the US was 46%, and for Japan 59%, in 1980.

One of the EEC's main import-control arrangements is the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA). The Economist magazine describes it: 'Now just starting its third four-year deal, the MFA has been used as a wholly protectionist weapon. Each successive MFA has exerted tighter controls on third-world suppliers lof clothing and textiles)..

The EEC has just made an import-limitation deal with the US on steel; it began operation similar agreements with South Korea, Spain, Japan; and other countries in the 1970s.

Other imports restricted by EEC countries include foutwear, electrical goods, watches and motor cycles.

Over the '50s and '60s, even the 1970s, tariffs were generally reduced. 1958 the EEC's average common external tariff on industrial goods was 10%. Now it is around 5%. The corresponding figure for Japan is 3%, and for the US 6%.

But the trend looks like being reversed. And on agricultural the Rife iposes import levies to raise prices to EECfixed levels.

Even inside the supposed free trade area of the EEC, there are more and more trade restrictions of an informal sort.

Two examples: Heineken beer (made in Holland) cannot be sold in . West Germany because it fails to conform to German regulations on brewing dating back to 1516 (!); and to get a lorry load of Gouda SOLIDARITY lives despite one year of martial law. national demonstration in support of those struggling for free trade unions in Poland. At last an official TUC spokesperson joins our platform.

Assemble 1pm, Sunday PROTECTIONISM has its costs for British workers. Clothing prices, for example, are estimated to be 15 to 40% higher than they would otherwise he heFIUMALA vEcause of import controls.

But such effects are minor compared with the effects of the protectionism of the richer countries on the Third World.

A lot of Third World countries have protectionist policies to help their infant industries develop - much as Germany, for example, cheese into France, Dutch lorry drivers have to get some 300 rubber stamps on their papers.

Up to the 1929 crash the capitalist world economy had more or less free trade, under the domination of Britain. In the 1930s it fell apart into competing trade blocs. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was set up in 1947 as part of the attempt to restructure the capitalist world economy post-war.

i was designed to liberalise trade on the assumption of a stable world financial system (based on the dollar) had similar policies in the late 19th century. They could hardly do otherwise.

Now some of these countries are develonirg to the point where they car export manufactured gu. †s vr a large scale to the . "h.: countries. And the res ponse of the US and the EEC is to throw up new trade barriers and to demand that the Third World countries lower their own barriers.

At the same time the Third World countries are and fixed exchange rates, i.e. the domination of the US. And it did that. World exports expanded by 285% between 1950 and 1970.

But in the late '60s and early '70s the basic assumptions collapsed. US domination was qualitatively weakened (the EEC is 2½ times bigger as a force in world trade, Japan is now a bigger producer of steel and cars). The dollar went into decline. Inflation took off. Fixed exchange rates collapsed.

The immediate cause was the effects on the US economy of the Vietnam war, but a longer-term FLATSHIRE in desperate need of export income to deal with their foreign debt crises. The result of these twin pressures is to force these countries into slumps ten times more devastating for their working people than Britain's.

If creeping protectionism escalates into trade war, the first casualties will be the workers and peasants of Africa, Asia and Latin decay of the post-war capitalist world system was at work. The safeguards against protectionism have lasted longer then the conditions that produced them, but if their decay is slower it is no less inevitable.

Accelerating the decay is no way to save jobs - any more than wishing the 1960's would return. INstead we must look to class action - and measures like work sharing under workers' control with no loss of pay, a shorter working week, and nationalisation under workers' control of firms declaring redundancies.