Online Casinos Eye World Bank Attack on Protectionism
The President of the World Bank warned national leaders of the dangers in protectionism and the need to honor free trade treaties, as the online casino industry watched in interest. Robert Zoellick told South American finance officials that protectionist policies will only extend and exacerbate the recession, even as online gambling operators continue to face protectionist measures around the globe.
Zoellick reminded the gathering in Chile that policies designed to promote domestic goods over imports resulted in the deepening and lengthening of the Great Depression. The World Bank had released a report this spring that noted a growing trend toward policies designed to interfere with foreign competition for domestic industries.
The US operates domestic online gambling featuring horse racing behind the protective barrier of the UIGEA Internet gambling ban, which has drawn the ire of the European Community and other nations. In addition, many European nations are themselves guilty of establishing laws allowing significant advantages or even monopolies to domestic operators, matters which lead to EC infringement hearings.
"It seems appealing in countries to buy their own national products," Zoellick said to the Chilean conference. "But that's the road to the problem that exacerbated the downturn in the 1930s and led to the Great Depression."
Historians have noted the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a bill which placed high tariffs across broad markets of US imports, as a contributor to acerbating the Great Depression. Gaming analysts wonder if the UIGEA will be seen in the future as another link in the chain that caused the current recession, with its denial of billions of dollars in gaming revenue, its cost to the financial industry in enforcement implementation, and its interference in free trade between nations.
