New Development Of Trade Protectionism Under The Financial Crisis

Through the history, we can find that trade protectionism always has a close relationship with economic crisis.Since the last half of 2008,with the global financial crisis caused by the U.S.subprime mortgage crisis raged hotter, the global economy was in overall recession, a sharp decline happened in international trade, global investment fell down and unemployment rate got increased in most countries, all of which resulted in rising pressure on global trade protectionism. Under financial crisis, trade protectionism has new features which are different from the past and also makes a great impact on global and Chinese economy. This article will start form analyzing the new development of trade protectionism, the deep reasons of the trade protectionism and its new features under the new situation. On this basis, a comprehensive analysis of the economic effect of current trade protectionism on the import and export countries and global trade will go on. Then we will focus on the influences of trade protectionism on China's foreign trade, and eventually provide countermeasures.Firstly, the paper analyzes the current economic, political and institutional reasons for the rising of trade protectionism. The economic reasons are the global economy recession and "de-globalization trend" caused by the financial crisis, as well as the imbalances of world economy and trade interests. The political reasons are the needs of political parties' interests and elections, the push from the interest groups and the strategic considerations about the whole national interest. Systematic reason is the deficiency of WTO. Then, we will analyze new characteristics of trade protectionism which are shown as four aspects:globalization and regionalization of the main body of trade protection, the comprehensiveness and extensibility of the object of trade protection, the diversity and innovation of trade protection measures and the offensive and pertinence of trade protection strategy.Secondly, the paper analyzes the economic effect according by the new features of the current trade protectionism. It takes the anti-dumping tariff as an example to explain the positive and negative impacts of trade protection measures on industrial competitiveness of import country. And then it takes the environmental and technical barriers as an example to analyze the impacts made by trade protection measures on the industrial competitiveness of export country. And then analyze the impacts on the global economy which made by the trade protectionism.Thirdly, the paper focuses on the impacts on Chinese foreign trade made by trade protectionism. We will analyze the negative and positive effects caused by trade protectionism on the basis of understanding the status quo of foreign trade barriers to our country. The negative effects are the decline of import and export volume, the decrease of using foreign capital, frustration of processing trade, non optimistic of industrial security situation and instability of domestic macro-economy. The positive effects include that some of trade barriers are good for adjustment of domestic economic structure and foreign trade growth mode, will provide the impetus to attract foreign personnel come back and create favorable conditions for enterprises to go out, and also will help China to build a harmonious, environment-friendly and resource-conserving society. And then Chinese steel industry will be shown as an example to further explain the effects which have been talked about.Finally, the paper offers the countermeasures.From global perspective, countries from all over the world should strengthen international collaboration and policy coordination, rely on and promote the multilateral trading system against trade protectionism. From China's perspective, at the strategic level, we should foster comprehensive competitive advantages to accelerate the transformation of foreign trade development mode and to upgrade the industrial structure, in order to achieve balanced and sustainable development. At the tactic lever, we should establish united front of government, guild and enterprise, trade protection measures should be carefully studied, effectively defended and positively answered.