G20 Governments Containing Protectionism

World Trade Organization - “The G20 rich and emerging countries have been broadly successful in holding protectionist pressures in check in recent months but must remain vigilant, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in a report on Monday. Some G20 countries, in contradiction to pledges at their London and Pittsburgh summits last year, have implemented new measures to restrict trade but their scope has been limited and the group has continued to avoid an escalation of protectionism….” [Reuters/Factiva]

The FT adds that “…the report, G20 Trade and Investment Measures, said that new import-restricting measures imposed over the past six months by G20 countries had affected at most 0.7 percent of G20 goods imports, or 0.4 percent of world imports – about half the increase in the previous six months…. There had been no new restrictions on services trade, though financial bail-outs continued to have a distorting effect and most new investment-related actions had encouraged rather than deterred foreign investors….” [Financial Times/Factiva]

Xinhua writes that “…prepared jointly with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the report was aimed at assessing the G20 countries' trade and investment measures since last September…. According to the report, the volume of world trade is estimated to have fallen by around 12 percent in 2009, back to a level at which it stood in 2006…. But whether trade growth in 2010 could be sustained is still a question because of factors such as macroeconomic and trade policies….” [Xinhua/Factiva]