It would be a great tragedy were that process stopped or reversed. The arguments against the global trading system that emerged first in Seattle and then spread over the past year and a half arguably touched a chord in many people partly, in the judgment of many analysts, by raising the fear that they would lose local political control of their destinies.
Clearly, the risk is that support for restrictions on trade is not dead, only quiescent. Those who protest against “globalization” appear too often to be self-designated representatives of developing country interests. For all the reasons that I have cited earlier, these protests, however well intentioned, are wrong-headed.