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Protectionism in the USA

Why is protectionism from both left and right so potent in US politics?

Edward Stourton examines America's long history of resistance to free trade, and asks why it has again become such a potent political force. Donald Trump's most consistent policy has been opposition to free trade agreements, which he sees as unfair, particularly with China. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has been equally opposed, if for different reasons, while Hillary Clinton has had to tack away from her previous support for free trade pacts.

Edward looks back to debates from the 19th Century to the 1990s to shed new light on these forces. And, he travels to a Pennsylvania steel making town threatened by Chinese competition to ask whether the protectionist impulse is a natural reaction to globalisation's wrenching changes.

(Photo: A banner hanging from the outside tof he New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 2008. Credit: Stand Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

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27 minutes

Last on

Mon 1 Aug 201606:32GMT
BBC World Service East Asia

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