An Exploration of the Driving Factors Behind Trade Protectionism

Abstract

Given the thought experiment of David Friedman questioning the legitimacy of protectionism of international trade, this paper provides several determining factors contributing to protectionism in different dimensions: the profusion of infant industries lack the capability of achieving economics of scale, failing to compete directly with foreign mature sectors; indirect tax revenue like tariff could provide an extra fund for local government, and salvage of declining industries guarantees employment rate; and imposing protection policies could also be deems as unavoidable strategy when there is a politic competition. Overall, this paper outlines different logic reasonings behind the imposition of international trade protectionism policy. It is concluded that even though imposing international trade protectionist policy has detrimental impacts on both sides, there are still a bunch of ones exist served for political purposes other than economic considerations in the forms of trade war, high tariffs and certain quota , science and technology sanctions, etc.