ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad overview of features of the early era in terms of trade policy and evolution of economic activity. It describes the importance of export demand during the first era of globalization and the interwar years. As the interwar years were a period of increased protectionism, the time was not yet ripe for other developing countries to enter the textile export market and start the process of industrialization that the successful developed nations had undergone in the first era of globalization, supported by export demand expansion. The United States with its large vast natural resources and growing population based on steady immigration shows the smallest dependence on exports to support growth among all industrial nations. The chapter concludes with an examination of the Great Depression and the substantial role export demand played in the transmission of the negative domestic downturn in the leading nation at that time.
