Tribune. As the third-largest exporting power in the world and high priestess of open markets, contemporary Germany claims the colors of free trade loud and clear. But, between loyalty to liberalism and arrangements with economic nationalism, German history seems to navigate between these two opposite poles of trade policy. In the XIXe century, Friedrich List was one of the first economists to alert to the dangers of free trade, unfavorable to the emerging countries of that time (including Germany), and to advocate the introduction of high customs duties to allow them to catch up with industry. Following his recommendations, a customs union was instituted in 1834 between the states of the German Confederation in order to facilitate trade between them and to protect their production from foreign competition.
The creation of this first internal market, long dominated by Prussia, gave a boost to the transformation of the German economy and precipitated its international opening: from 1850 to 1879, its imports thus went from 7.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the German Reich, equivalent to 0.28 billion euros, 17% (1.43 billion euros), slightly exceeding its exports (which increased from 0.27 to 1.30 billion d euros). Some young high-tech industries – electronics, chemicals and machine tools – benefited from the growing globalization of trade, while others – steel, iron and wheat production – suffered from foreign competition. Hence the protectionist turn taken by Bismarck in 1879: thanks to the support of the Conservatives, the Chancellor introduced customs tariffs to support the industry, which was wrecked by the stock market crash of 1873 and to defend cereal agriculture challenged by American and Russian products.
The First World War ended this relative dynamism of foreign trade. Despite a large network of commercial partnerships forged after 1920, it could only be maintained with difficulty in the interwar period: severely restricted by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany could even less use the protectionist lever to protect her trade only after the occupation of the Ruhr (1921) and hyperinflation (1923) she could not regain full commercial sovereignty until 1925. The great crash of 1929 and American protectionism finally got the better of her trade outside, even before the self-sufficiency policy of the IIIe Reich, the arms race and the imperatives of the war economy.
