Frans Timmermans Quotes

The United States can't keep a completely open system if the rest of the world is less open. The United States may have to take a leaf out of the book of Japan, China, and Germany, and have protectionism inside the system.

Protectionism is something that will hurt everybody, but especially the United States.

In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.

Protectionism is a very real danger. It is understandable that in times of a severe downturn protectionist pressures mount but the lessons of history are clear. If we give in to protectionist pressures, we will only send the world into a downward spiral.

No one wants to return to the old protectionism, but we need to protect our own…. We are committed to the unrestricted defense of national interests.

What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

While protectionism doesn’t work, pure free trade doesn’t work either.

Trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. ...We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form

There are some who want to move us back to the days when we were protectionists and keep all goods off our shores.

Consider trade protectionism. It's been tried - and found wanting - since the Great Depression.

I want to go get trade agreements because if America walls itself up, if we address sort of an economic fortress America, we will lose.

Protectionism has never been an answer, will never be an answer. We need trade. We need trade agreements worldwide.

I worry about protectionists, which is another way of saying less competition, less trade around the world. And I view those as twins of negativity.

Ahead now, I think you'll see the big nations shrink back into their own corners of the world. I'm not saying we'll see no international trade, but it will be nothing like the conveyer belt from China to Wal-Mart that we've known the last few decades. And the prospects for conflict are very, very high.

Before we move forward with new efforts to lower the barriers to international free trade, we must review the consequences of the policies of the past and address the problems of the present.

The drive toward economic nationalism is only part of the general revival of nationalism.

I have long been a vocal advocate of reciprocal free trade though that position did not endear me to my own political party. And I continue to strongly believe in free and fair international trade.

I am utterly opposed to anything which will alter the Free Trade character of this country.

Protectionism is the fool's gold of American politics.

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

Demanding freedom of access to other markets isn't protectionism, it's free trade.

Were our narrow and malignant politics [protectionism] to meet with success, we should reduce all our neighboring nations to the same state of sloth and ignorance that prevails in Morocco and the coast of Barbary.

There has always been a temptation, at times of economic difficulty, to turn inward and put up the shutters. That is when we need free trade most.

Perhaps the globalization potion is too strong for us today; it should be watered down with some measure of economic nationalism.

The thing that we have to worry about is this protectionist movement that has reared its head again in this country