Mexico protects its own sugar -- and, by extension, jobs -- with high tariffs.
E-commerce firms also have to deal with high tariffs, slow border bureaucracies and bad infrastructure.
Many of the fastest-growing nations owned and ran major industries and protected infant industries with high tariffs.
Start with high tariffs against imports imposed from the time of Alexander Hamilton, to help foster America's industrial development.
And in the countries with high tariffs, like Myanmar, the authorities are reluctant to cut into their own revenue by promoting the exploitation of the CEPT.
And are they guilty of deterring European companies, either repelling them at the border with high tariffs, or bogging them down in cumbersome rules and regulations?
Argentina's supporters have counterattacked, noting that the United States, for all its talk of free trade in the Americas, continues to placate domestic lobbies with high tariffs on many Argentine products.
An increasingly popular method nowadays is to strangle traders not with high tariffs, which are easy to spot, but with red tape, which is not.Governments often justify these steps as short-term remedies for particular problems.
Combined with high tariffs and small quotas for some farm products, this makes it dauntingly hard for African farmers (and remember, most Africans are farmers) to export to rich countries.Trade barriers within Africa have come down; the average unweighted tariff is now 16%, compared with about 30% in 1990.
In Congo, half a dozen national armies and countless rebel groups have fought over some of the world's richest deposits of gold, cobalt, diamonds and coltan.In countries with high tariffs, rebels can make money by seizing a stretch of border and charging smugglers less than the government would.
