In spite of the G-20’s stated objective of increasing international cooperation through stopping the practice of trade and investment protectionism the trend towards restrictive measures is continuing. Restrictions aimed at antidumping protections account for over half of these and their increasing number means that they are interrupting the supply chain of many different industries within the US.

While it is true that there have been many restrictions which have been dropped as well as many trade liberalization plans put in place, there remains a steady increase in the number of restrictive trade practices overall. While generally, the impact is still low, at around 3.5% of total world trade, the indication that so many of the G-20 members are willing to break agreements and continue to place trade restrictions on imports to protect their domestic markets has many questioning the reliability of the plan. The WTO points out that the low level of impact on the world economy is an indication that most member nations are generally complying with the G-20 agreement. At the same time this doesn’t address the issue of the mounting number of restrictive actions that will have to be resolved at future summits.

This situation is seen by many analysts as an indication that the current system of multilateral trade agreements may be reaching its use-by date in a world economy that is largely multinational. Another contributing factor in the return to protectionist policies by many of the member nations is likely to be the soft European economy where cooling markets have reduced the demand for imported products in an effort to reduce foreign spending as a debt-cutting fiscal measure. This in turn has encouraged others to restrict trade in order to protect their domestic markets and employment levels, largely by the imposition of temporary tariff increases that make imported products less attractive. Of course fewer imports also mean that there is less demand for intermodal shipping services. This in turn spreads the economic influence of the protectionist policy differences between two individual nations to third party countries. It also puts more pressure on the already oversupplied containerized shipping fleets in many parts of the world.

In the face of these circumstances the WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has called for G-20 members to avoid making things worse by a return to isolationist policies, saying that they should instead focus on unlocking the potential for trade to grow stronger by investing in international trade.