page_title: Mercantilism
hierarchical_section_title: Mercantilism
caption_attribution_description: English: Claude Lorrain painting from 1639, as seen on French TV series Palettes
context_page_description: Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. These policies aim to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus. Mercantilism includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies frequently led to war and also motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.
  Mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization, before falling into decline, although some commentators argue that it is still practiced in the economies of industrializing countries, in the form of economic interventionism. It promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were an almost universal feature of mercantilist policy.
context_section_description: Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy.  It promotes imperialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. These policies aim to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus. Mercantilism includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies frequently led to war and also motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.
  Mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization, before falling into decline, although some commentators argue that it is still practiced in the economies of industrializing countries, in the form of economic interventionism. It promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were an almost universal feature of mercantilist policy.
  With the efforts of supranational organizations such as the World Trade Organization to reduce tariffs globally, non-tariff barriers to trade have assumed a greater importance in neomercantilism.
caption: Seaport at sunrise, a French seaport painted by Claude Lorrain in 1639, at the height of mercantilism
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