The pre-Trump build-up of trade discrimination : scale, form, and drivers

Abstract

This paper contests the view that, before the U.S. tariff increases of 2018 and 2019, governments around the world successfully resisted protectionist pressures since the onset of the global financial crisis. Before President Trump was inaugurated, the cumulative build-up of over 11,000 policy interventions that discriminated against foreign commercial interests implicated over two-thirds of world goods trade. An exploratory data analysis of possible drivers of national policy mixes towards domestic and foreign commercial interests is presented. Clear differences between G20 and other nations and between the immediate crisis response (from November 2008 to December 2010) and afterwards are found.