One thing you can probably get 99% of economists to agree on is that a global trade war in the middle of a global recession is a bad idea. If every country increases import tariffs, hoping to protect its domestic industry from foreign competition, global trade will fall in all directions, hurting everybody. Put another way, increased tariffs are a negative-sum game.

To date, we haven’t seen much in the way of higher trade barriers during this crisis, although you could argue that some bailouts constitute subsidies favoring local over foreign companies. Instead, however, we are seeing friction over currency valuations. If you want to boost your net exports but don’t want to do the obviously unfriendly thing and increase tariffs, the other option is to devalue your currency: a weaker currency increases the price of imported goods and reduces the price of exported goods, hence reducing imports and increasing exports.

Yesterday, Tim Geithner accused China of “manipulating its currency,” something we’ve heard periodically over the last several years but not in much in the last few months. (Of course, Geithner then said that “a strong dollar is in America’s national interest,” whatever that means.)  Switzerland threatened to intervene on foreign exchange markets to suppress the value of the Swiss franc. And the French finance minister criticized the U.K. for letting the pound depreciate. (Hat tip Macro Man for the last two.)

Continue reading “Protectionism by Another Name?” →