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Top global policy makers warn on protectionism

Reuters, Washington
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and top IMF policy-maker Anne Krueger, fearing that decades of trade liberalisation are being reversed, issued stern warnings yesterday against signs of creeping protectionism.
Their biggest concern is that governments are succumbing to shortterm domestic political pressures over job losses and overlooking the biggest benefit of trade -- long-term economic growth.
"We cannot afford -- especially at this juncture -- any risk of a return to protectionism. Trade can sometimes be a controversial domestic policy issue," Anne Krueger, the IMF's first deputy managing director and top trade economist, told an emerging market conference in New York.
"But governments need to resist the pressure to give in to the lobbying of narrow interest groups who cannot benefit at the expense of the wider
public," she said.
US steel tariffs, ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization last week, European curbs on farm imports, and this week's US import caps on some Chinese textiles, are some of the protectionist tendencies emerging everywhere, say economists.
Key world trade talks broke down in Cancun, Mexico in September over farm subsidies, a divisive issue between rich and poor countries.
Gary Hufbauer, a trade economist at the Institute for International Economics, cited signs of slowing momentum in trade liberalization.
"Textiles is troublesome and just the harbinger of more to come," said Hufbauer, expressing doubt that a US plan to end all textile and apparel import quotas in 2005 would survive political pressure.
In the United States, President George W Bush, a supporter of free trade, is under pressure to protect the ailing US manufacturing industry, which has lost 2.8 million jobs in 39
months, concentrated in states that are key for the 2004 US election.
US manufacturers have blamed China, saying it is keeping its currency artificially low which gives Chinese exports an advantage.
The Fed's Greenspan waned that protectionism could significantly erode the flexibility of the global economy.
"Some clouds of emerging protectionism have become increasingly visible on today's horizon," Greenspan told a monetary conference in Washington on Thursday.
"Consequently, it is imperative that creeping protectionism be thwarted and reversed," he said.
Hoping to influence governments, the heads of the pro-trade IMF and World Bank on Thursday released a joint letter calling for the resumption of world trade talks after Cancun.
The letter noted the benefits of free trade for growth, saying it had been the single most powerful tool in reducing poverty and raising living standards.