Mercantilism

Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize a exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs as well as subsidies on traded goods tothat goal. The policy aims to reduce a possible current account deficit ora current account surplus, and it includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, particularly of finished goods. Historically, such(a) policies frequently led to war and motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist picture varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.

It promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state energy to direct or determine at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were near universally a feature of mercantilist policy. before it fell into decline, mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe and some areas in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization, but some commentators argue that this is the still practised in the economies of industrializing countries in the pretend of economic interventionism.

With the efforts of supranational organizations such(a) as the World Trade Organization to reduce tariffs globally, non-tariff barriers to trade realise assumed a greater importance in neomercantilism.

Wars and imperialism

Mercantilism was the economic explanation of warfare using economics as a tool for warfare by other means backed up by the state apparatus and was well suited to an era of military warfare. Since the level of world trade was viewed as fixed, it followed that the only way to increase a nation's trade was to take it from another. A number of wars, near notably the Anglo-Dutch Wars and the Franco-Dutch Wars, can be linked directly to mercantilist theories. Most wars had other causes but they reinforced mercantilism by clearly defining the enemy, and justified harm to the enemy's economy.

Mercantilism fueled the Hudson's Bay agency operating in present-day Canada.

With the establishment of oveseas ]