Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, argued that we haven't seen the back of protectionism yet, in a debate with Linda Yueh for City AM. Butler asserted:

We’ve seen it aplenty from populist presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. And – if she manages to escape indictment – Hillary Clinton will become President only by appeasing Sanders and all those Democrats who previously voted for Nader, Perot and Buchanan. That’s not good, particularly since the US is a massive trading nation.

Meanwhile, EU protectionism may sink the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), signalling the high-water mark of global free trade. Many will excuse the US’s tariff on Chinese steel as an “emergency measure” for “special circumstances”. Such claims are always the thin end of the wedge for bad but enduring policy. But it’s not just about tariff numbers. A bigger concern is non-tariff barriers, where protectionism abounds. Need one say more than “a single market in services”?

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