Trade and customs relations of the industrial era: international legal aspects

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to highlight the historical, state and legal aspects of the genesis of trade and customs relations in the conditions of the formation of an industrial society, and their influence on socioeconomic and political processes in the world context of the 17th-19th centuries. The research methodology was based primarily on the basic principles of dialectical epistemology and heuristics, which created the conditions for scientific conclusions. The principle of historicism belongs to the main methodological principles. The idea of analyzing social phenomena from the standpoint of historicism presupposes their consideration in terms of structural and transformational connections. The main historical forms of customs policy, which were formed and operated from the middle of the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century, were protectionism and free trade. It should be noted that the policy of protectionism at the initial stage of its evolution acted as a sub-policy and was implemented within the very popular policy of mercantilism among Western European states. At the end of the 19th century, the content of the protectionist policy was to create conditions for the development of the national economy by artificially restricting competition from other states and at the same time helping national producers to develop foreign markets, using the foreign policy position of the state and supporting the exporter. However, any measures to limit foreign competition, as a rule, cause an adequate response from other states, which during the 19th and 20th centuries led to a large number of so-called “customs wars” – the introduction by states of more and more new tariff and non-tariff restrictions against each other. to each other, which ultimately had a negative effect on the state of international trade in general. A specific mechanism for the implementation of trade and customs policy is the tariff business, which includes the justification of the relevant tariff rates that meet a set of socio-economic conditions and perform a number of functions. But at the end of the 19th century, in connection with the new technological revolution, the aggravation of international economic relations, customs tariffs again turn into cumbersome laws and begin to perform not only a regulatory and fiscal function, but mainly act as a mechanism of international politics in a competitive struggle between states. Thus, according to the standards of the organization of international trade in the 17th century, a developed foreign trade infrastructure was of great importance, which included: a certain legal status of the merchants, the availability of working capital for entrepreneurs, a commercial fleet, developed port facilities, the ability of the state to support its own merchants in foreign markets. Only a minimal approximation to these standards allowed the states of that time to join the existing system of trade and customs agreements.