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The Controversy Between Mercantilism And Free Trade

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The controversy that currently swirls around the phenomenon of globalization is to a large extent a variation on a much older debate between mercantilist supporters of protectionism and liberal proponents of free trade. In its classic sixteenth-century conception, mercantilism was a policy aimed at increasing the national wealth via the accumulation of precious metals like gold and silver.
Modern mercantilism, or neomercantilism, is focused instead on accumulation of national wealth via a trade surplus, which is the result of exporting more than one imports. When a country has a trade surplus, it both accumulates monetary reserves and promotes the development of domestic industries.
This mercantilist concern with national wealth accumulation …show more content…

Thus, for realists, the world economy is essentially a zero sum game in which every gain for one country is a loss for another.
The realist or mercantilist approach to the world economy requires that governments play an activist role in promoting and protecting their national industries from foreign competition. Such policies of protectionism can take many forms. The most straightforward is via tariffs. A tariff is a tax levied on imported goods and services. If importers of such goods pass the cost of that tax onto consumers, it will raise the price of imports and make domestic goods more pricecompetitive and attractive to consumers.
Used to similar effect are a variety of nontariff barriers (NTBs), which include any protectionist barriers that are not tariffs. The most common nontariff barrier is a quota, or a limit imposed on the amount of a particular good that can be imported within a given time period. By limiting the supply of that product, the effect is, like a tariff, to raise the price of the import and make domestic products more competitive. Governments can sometimes be very …show more content…

Consider the following hypothetical example.
A farmer in Minnesota decides to switch from producing soybeans to growing bananas. His reasoning is that unlike soybean fields, which are very common in the United States, his banana plantation will be the only one in the continental
United States. The cold climate in Minnesota will make growing bananas difficult, but he plans to construct acres of enormous greenhouses in which the temperature, humidity, and soil will be perfect for growing bananas. Of course, these
Minnesota “hothouse” bananas will be very expensive, and although a few consumers might be persuaded to pay the premium price for Minnesota bananas because of their high quality or to support a local producer, the vast majority of shoppers are likely to continue to buy much cheaper bananas imported from Central
America. However, the farmer has persuaded his local congressional representative to introduce legislation imposing high tariffs on imported bananas. If that legislation passes, the cost of the tariff will be passed onto the consumer, making Central American bananas more expensive and Minnesota bananas more

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