WASHINGTON — The world’s major powers are repeatedly breaking their pledges not to erect trade barriers, and there’s no sign the “protectionist juggernaut” will ease as countries recover from the global downturn, an influential monitoring organization said Friday.
Since first taking a no-protectionism vow at a summit meeting last November, the world’s 20 major economies have been responsible for as many as 121 “blatantly protectionist” measures, with 134 more in the pipeline, said Global Trade Alert, a monitoring service overseen by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research and supported by the World Bank and other international organizations.
The findings, bound to come up at next week’s Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, follow a report earlier in the week by the Geneva-based World Trade Organization that cited “continued slippage toward more trade restricting and distorting policies” by the U.S. and its major trading partners.
A U.S.-China dispute that erupted last weekend over Chinese tires and American chicken exports is just the latest example of how hard it has been for leaders to live up to the pledge made at the November summit.
