The decrease of imports and exports was one of the greatest causes of economic nationalism in Europe after the Great Depression. Even though imports were already higher than exports before the accident, the difference between the two was even higher afterward. This negative result of net exports caused a rise in economic nationalism with the intervention of European governments.
Nationalists actions initiated when governments were put under pressure to impose deflationary policies. The trade deficit caused decreases in confidence and increases in political stability. Additionally, countries devalued their currencies in order to protect its exports and its industries (Clavin, 2000). The accumulation of these impacts, the ones of the World War
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The question as to how the Great Depression led to economic nationalism in Europe and more specifically Germany can be answered and concluded with the main causes and the consequences such as the different actions governments had to take in order to benefit their countries.
An outbreak of nationalism and protectionism in Europe was experienced after the depression affected the economy. Firstly, the depression caused big money losses in many European firms. This led to a rise in unemployment when more workers were fired, thus decreasing their incomes. Consequently, European governments decreased unemployment benefits (Paxton, 1975) and offer more employments to encourage its citizens to become employed again (Parker, 2008). Secondly, the decrease in exports became higher than the decrease in imports after the accident. Therefore, governments had to take action devaluating their currencies to boost exports and to control the economic stagnation (Clavin, 2000), as well as they imposed deflationary policies such as exchange controls, protective tariffs and quantitative limits on imports (Erchengreen & Irwin, 2009). Not only it was clear that Europe experienced economic nationalism after the depression but it was even more certain when Germany suffered from an indebtedness to the United States due to the incapability of European banks to repay all the loans they have borrowed from the American bondholders. It experienced thus a government deficit and a hyperinflation, thus putting the government under pressure to cut all taxes and print more