Comments on Foreman-Peck, Hughes Hallett and Ma and on Clavin

Although other writers have calculated that protection benefited British GNP in the early 1930s, James Foreman-Peck, Andrew Hughes Hallett and Yue Ma present a model which indicates an even more dramatic rise than previous estimates. In this, they reinforce an emerging orthodoxy. However, they now take the case much further with the surprising argument that Britain’s best contribution to alleviating the international depression would have been by introducing tariffs earlier in the slump. An earlier adoption of protection, by improving the balance of payments and perhaps bolstering confidence, would have enabled Britain to stay on gold, thus averting the catastrophic consequences that followed the breakdown of the international exchange rate regime. Moreover, British tariffs, with stable exchange rates preserved among the major industrial economies, would have provided a powerful bargaining counter for trade liberalisation.