The London Telegraph
Original Publish Date: July 3, 2008
As sure as night follows day, the global economic downturn is prompting calls for protectionism. It promises to become a salient issue in the American presidential campaign with the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, pinning his free-trade colours firmly to the mast while his Democrat opponent, Senator Barack Obama, heads down the protectionist route with his claim that the North American Free Trade Agreement signed by Bill Clinton has destroyed one million American jobs.
Mr Obama's playing to the blue-collar gallery may be election-year posturing, yet it remains alarming that a man who may occupy the White House six months from now can be so out of kilter with the realities of globalisation.
Closer to home, nascent protectionism has sparked a rip-snorter of a row between the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently holds the presidency of the European Union, and the EU's Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson. Mr Sarkozy accuses Mr Mandelson of selling out Europe's farmers (by which he means French farmers) by seeking a trade deal that opens up world food markets to developing countries, particularly those in Africa.
Mr Mandelson, rather bravely taking on one of the most powerful figures in European politics, accuses the French president of undermining both him and the EU's negotiating position.
Such open hostility in the higher echelons of the EU is rare and would be highly entertaining if the stakes were not so high. This is a confrontation that Mr Mandelson has to win.
There are not many issues on which this newspaper would support the twice-disgraced former Labour Cabinet minister, but free trade is one of them. And there is something richly comic in Mr Sarkozy lecturing the EU on economic management given the state of the French economy.
Saddled with a gigantic public sector and enormous state debts, burdened by ludicrously outdated social costs and hamstrung by an incontinently interventionist government, it provides an object lesson in how not to compete in the modern world.
And that, of course, is why Mr Sarkozy espouses protectionism. France is fearful of the challenges of globalisation and its instinctive reaction is to throw up the barricades. Such instincts are dangerously short-sighted.
Mr Sarkozy should take heed of his fellow Right-winger, Senator McCain, who reminds us that tariff legislation in the US in the early 1930s turned a recession into a depression: "It sounds like a lot of fun to bash China and others, but free trade has been the engine of our economy.
Free trade should be the continuing principle that guides this nation's economy." Mr Sarkozy should take note.
"Telegraph view" is written by our team of leader writers and commentators. This team includes David Hughes, Philip Johnston, Simon Heffer, Janet Daley, Con Coughlin, Robert Colvile, Iain Martin and Alex Singleton.
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