The total cost to an economy of adopting protectionist trade policies. In the short run, this is the cost to consumers of having to buy more expensive domestic products rather than cheaper or better quality imports. This normally exceeds the private gains to domestic producers. Defenders of protection argue that if the labour employed in protected production would otherwise have been unemployed, there may be a net gain to the country. In the longer run, protection has other costs: among these are the discouragement to technical improvements given by not having to compete with imports, and the diversion of business effort from improving production into rent-seeking. It is argued that in the long run protection cannot cut a country's natural rate of unemployment: it merely diverts labour from potential export industries into import-competing ones.

• capital adequacy
• capital allowances
• capital appreciation
• capital asset pricing model
• capital consumption
• capital deepening
• capital expenditure
• capital flight
• capital formation
• capital gain
• capital gains tax
• capital gearing
• capital goods
• capital inflow
• capital-intensity
• capitalism
• capital issues
• capitalist
• capitalization, market
• capital-labour ratio
• capital levy
• capital loss
• capital market
• capital mobility
• capital movements