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Admin moved page How Did Trade Tariffs Develop? to How Did Trade Tariffs Develop
Gradually, Britain reduced tariffs and entirely removed them for food commodities in 1840s with the repeal of the Corn Laws (Figure 2). This was, in part, motivated by events in Ireland, which was experiencing the Great Famine that led to a need to export food. Tariffs were often seen as a way to protect domestic industry and economic sectors such as agriculture.
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Gradually, throughout the 19th century, as industrial production increased, reducing tariffs was seen as a way to benefit economies looking towards exports of manufactured goods as a mean to growth economies through trade. This followed a general trend throughout Europe, as the economies became more integrated and greater trade now began to flow, resulting in reduced tariffs in Europe. Rather than reduce competition, increased trade spurred countries to emulate each other. Germany in particular began to greatly expand its industries as it rapidly developed its economy and began to be more competitive in trade.<ref>For more on 19th century tariffs and changing attitudes towards them throughout the 19th century in Europe and Britain, see: Howe, Anthony. 1997. <i>Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846-1946</i>. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press. </ref>
====Recent Developments====
Events after World War II have shaped recent economic approaches to tariffs. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 was created with 23 countries in order to help foster multilateral trade that would help the global economy recover after World War II. The GATT became the foundation in which the World Trade Organization (WTO) was built, as it became its successor. The intent of this new economic order was also to fight Communism and trade was seen as vital for US policy in order to counter what they saw as threats from the Soviet Union in attracting countries to their sphere.
GATT became the framework in which other trade agreements, including the European Community (EC), which developed into the European Union, in creating regional and bilateral trade agreements. With the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, and the increasing influence of the International Monetary Fund, WTO, and World Bank, countries have increasing increasingly lowered tariffs and signed trade agreements at much higher rates since the 1990s. Regional trade agreements were seen as an important goal, with North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America forming varying agreements. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an iteration of this in the early 1990s.
Today, free trade agreements have generated controversy as many industries see the benefit of moving manufacturing overseas to lower costs and many countries abandon some forms of manufacturing all together altogether as countries are better able to produce goods at lower costs. Free trade agreements have helped to reorient global trade, with increasingly low margin manufacturing, such as textiles and basic consumer products, moving to developing develop countries, while high technology manufacturing is still dominated by mostly most developed countries, although this is also now being challenged. Rising countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the so-called BRICS) have increasingly benefited from free trade agreements. Nevertheless, in more developed countries, there has been a backlash against free trade agreements because it has had the effect of reducing manufacturing production in some economic sectors.<ref>For more on the evolution of the modern globalized economy and its relation to tariffs, see: Irwin, Douglas A, Petros C Mavroidis, and A. O Sykes. 2009. <i>The Genesis of the GATT</i>. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. </ref>
====Summary====
However, there has been a lot of controversy around this, as increasingly globalized trade is seen as producing environmental harm, weakening manufacturing in some countries, and some see it as having forced some countries to conform to a single global economic order that not all agree with.
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