글로벌금융위기와 국제무역질서: 현황 및 전망

Abstract

The recent global financial crisis has affected the global economy in a number of ways. With the relatively strong contraction of world trade in 2009 and 2010, worries over the possible collapse of the world economy, similar to the Great Depression in the 1930s, had been raised in the global economy. Analyzing the numerous documents published by international organizations, think-tanks and academic scholars, this paper attempted to evaluate whether or not the world economy has become more protectionist since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, and the worries mentioned have been materialized. Main findings of this paper are as follows: First, it was found out that virtually all the major trading nations have intensified their protectionist measures, such as trade-remedy measures and non-tariff measures. Some non-WTO member countries, including the Russian Federation, have on and off adopted tariff increase as import restrictive measures, as well. Second, a careful scrutiny of the WTO-inventory of trade policy instruments has revealed that there was a counterforce against the increased protectionism, primarily in the form of rollback of import protections that had been earlier adopted to respond to the global financial crisis. Third, it was found that a number of internationally concerted actions conducted by international organizations and meetings, such as the WTO and G20, have successfully reduced the potential of increasing protectionism, which was deemed to be a major challenge to the sustainable economic growth. This way, the risk for many economies to be indulged into a vicious circle of “protectionism-economic recession” could be effectively avoided.