The dog that did not bark is stirring restlessly in its sleep. Trade protectionism, emblematic of the destructive economic policies followed in the Great Depression of the 1930s, has been remarkably absent since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008.
But with high unemployment in the rich countries and renewed threats of economic weakness across the global economy, experts and policy makers are becoming less sanguine that the beast will remain deep in slumber.
Global Trade Alert – a monitoring service run by Simon Evenett, a professor at St Gallen university in Switzerland – reported on Thursday that protectionist actions including tariff increases, export restrictions and skewed regulatory changes were much higher in 2010 and 2011 than previously thought, with many more in the pipeline.