Labour injustice, protectionism, and transnational solidarity

The main objective of this paper is to show that the chief objections to protectionism are not as straightforward as they may initially appear, and that protectionist demands might even form part of a broader transnational justice agenda. To this end, the paper proceeds in four steps. It begins by briefly exposing the way trade liberalisation is involved in the harms suffered by certain categories of workers within advanced industrial countries. It then examines two frequently raised objections to protectionism — the first focusing on the non—wrongfulness of competitive harms and the second on the moral duty to relieve world poverty — and presents several possible counter—objections. The final section highlights the need to move beyond the dichotomy of rich versus poor countries and to adopt a posture of global citizenship; it proposes to conceive of this posture along a model of ‘transnational political solidarity’, which invites us to cast a different light on the question of protectionism.