Portuguese protectionist regime (1842-1913): an example of unsuccessful «competing» industrialization

Abstract

The main purpose of the present article is to demonstrate the protectionist character of Portuguese tariff policy which lasted for the whole period 1842-1913. The maintenance of the regime established in 1837 through a highly protective customs tariff is taken here as the result of converging interests of the State, the revenues of which being mainly from customs duties, and the interests of economic groups who benefited directly from the high duties imposed on imports. The author of this article puts forward some hypotheses concerning the effects of protective tariffs upon Portuguese economic growht and structure. In this perspective, tariff policy explains to a great extent the survival, in the second half of nineteenth century, of some economic activities on which Portuguese comparative advantages were relatively small. Consequently, the author concludes that the opportunity to a sustained economic growth, «complementary» to that of the most developed countries and based on a greater integration in the world economy, was lost to a moderate «competing» economic growth, based on the internal market and constrained by the limits of a small and backward national economy.