ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is not to enter the long-standing debate on the economics of international trade, a debate that is concerned with the economic consequences of free trade compared with various forms of protection (Vousen 1990). Nor do I intend to enter the growing discussion on the political economy of protection which looks at the political determinants of protectionist regimes and seeks to explain the latter in terms of an equilibrium between conflicting interests in a political market (Magee et al. 1989). Instead, taking as undisputed what seems to me to be the main thrust of the economics of international trade and of the political economy of protection, I want to approach, if only in a preliminary and sketchy fashion, some of the more fundamental issues of free trade and protection from a constitutional political economy perspective.
