Barriers to entry

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: Washington, DC, worries that health and safety standards and technical barriers to trade, such as licensing and certification requirements, will be used aggressively to shield domestic industries as the global downturn drags on.

Closing the back door, too

Subsidy and currency levers can also be pulled to distort trade. A government bail-out of the Detroit carmakers would favour those firms over their competitors. China’s government is reported to be considering subsidies and higher export rebates for its steel mills. (It has already announced higher export tariff rebates on 3,700 items in an effort to boost its sales abroad.) A recent slide in the yuan has also raised fears of competitive devaluations.

Faced with such threats, there would appear to be an even greater need to complete the Doha round of trade talks. However, the talks, which have already dragged on since 2001, stalled again in July, and a ministerial meeting pencilled in for mid-December was postponed. Since that tremor in 1982, world trade has benefited from more than two decades of increasing openness. Tariffs on goods have fallen from a worldwide average of 26% in 1986 to 8.8% in 2007. Trade has grown spectacularly—more than twice as fast, on average, as world output. It has also become more inclusive: developing countries have nearly doubled their share of world exports since 2000, to 37% in 2007. A rise in protectionism could turn the clock back a long way.