1948–2018: From the Free-Trade Vision to Protectionist Attitudes

Abstract

The institutions born at the end of WW II were inspired to a well-tempered liberism, but this principle has been disregarded in the following decades, especially since 1980, leaving instead room to an embittered liberism, which found its highest expression in the Washington Consensus. Then, the initial principle has largely been disregarded in practice. Even so, all in all, the Bretton Woods institutions, as they have evolved, have led to positive results. However, more recently populism and protectionism have spread, whose diffusion is the product, certainly excessive, of that exacerbate liberism, together with the blatant violations of the international rule performed by China. Political commentators and historians attribute the election of Donald Trump and its economic policy to the economic crisis begun in 2007–8, which was born rightly from such exacerbate liberism. The populistic waves that afflict Europe, herald of similar closures, can have similar foundations. If the world will stop in the path leading to commercial wars and closures of frontiers and will be able to reconstruct the season that led to the tempered liberism, is something desirable, but at present difficult to forecast.

This article was awarded the ‘Premio Economia Internazionale’, in Genoa, Dec. 6th, 2018. The author is grateful to Amedeo Amato, the Jury of the Prize and the Genoa Chamber of Commerce. An earlier version of this chapter has been hosted on the website of The Institute for International Economics, Italy. This is an updated version.