Progress was made in trade liberalization through the early General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)

Progress was made in trade liberalization through the early General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).

• Progress was made in trade liberalization through the early General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).
• Interventionist policies have been largely abandoned across the world since the 1980s with the rise of neoliberalism.
• Countries that still practiced old-style interventionism and protectionism experienced declining economic growth.
• Establishment of WTO created a new global economic system.
• True: The late nineteenth century can indeed be described as a laissez-faire era.
• True: this story paints a fundamentally misleading picture.
• Between 1860 and 1880, many European countries reduced tariff protection substantially. Not the US.
• The rest of the world was forced to practice free trade through colonialism and through unequal treaties