How to Use mercantilism in a Sentence

mercantilism

noun
  • The short life span of the deal can be blamed in large part on national barriers — which are likely to rise even further as a new mercantilism emerges.
    Steven Davidoff Solomon, New York Times, 21 Feb. 2017
  • Its wild mercantilism put Genoa in contact with the world, endowing it with the wealth and architectural and artistic grandeur of a city like Venice, and the grit of a port city like Marseille.
    Tamar Adler, Condé Nast Traveler, 31 May 2017
  • The world is now pushing back against Chinese mercantilism.
    Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 31 Dec. 2020
  • Some in the Trump administration see steel as part of a much bigger problem of Chinese mercantilism.
    The Economist, 11 Jan. 2018
  • Countries through the years have used other means to keep foreign goods out and protect homegrown companies, a practice known as mercantilism.
    Andrew Mayeda and Bryce Baschuk / Bloomberg, Time, 24 Mar. 2018
  • His steel and aluminum tariffs punish friends who could forge an alliance against Chinese mercantilism.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 10 June 2018
  • Why did the Bush administration do so little to fight back against Chinese mercantilism?
    Reihan Salam, Slate Magazine, 16 May 2017
  • The failure to stop Chinese mercantilism severely damaged the U.S. workforce.
    David Dayen, The New Republic, 27 Mar. 2018
  • The Trump administration is right to make Chinese mercantilism an issue, Mr. Cass says, but its response has been ineffectual.
    Jason Willick, WSJ, 23 Nov. 2018
  • Hume was no fan of slavery, mercantilism, or the apparatus of imperialism; Adam Smith, his compatriot, was more outspoken about these evils still.
    Kwame Anthony Appiah, The New York Review of Books, 9 May 2019
  • The Economist was founded in opposition to tariffs and mercantilism.
    The Economist, 7 June 2018
  • But mercantilism, the erroneous notion that exports are inherently good and imports always bad is not only alive and well in the general populace, but has a grip on the president of our nation and on his commerce secretary.
    Edward Lotterman, Twin Cities, 3 June 2017
  • Some analysts have described the nation’s evolving trade approach as mercantilism, a government effort to prop up exports and restrain imports in pursuit of trade and financial surpluses.
    Jon Hilsenrath, WSJ, 1 Apr. 2018
  • The economy is on an upswing, propped up by debt but also, for now, defying conventional theories that mercantilism will sap China’s creative vigor.
    Andrew Browne, WSJ, 26 Sep. 2017
  • While trade theorists exhorted the US and its partners to practice free trade, China was cleaning America’s clock with an unapologetic strategy of mercantilism.
    Rober Kuttner, Time, 30 Sep. 2019
  • More ominously, China’s mercantilism is part of a larger Xi Jinping strategy to establish a new military and commercial hegemony in Asia.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 18 Sep. 2018
  • But no serious critic has offered any other strategy to counter four decades of systematic Chinese mercantilism and economic exploitation.
    Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 27 Aug. 2019
  • After European mercantilism exploded into early forms of empire in the 16th century, the ensuing markets of enslavement and exploitation fostered a logic of racial hierarchy that persists into the present day.
    Jo Livingstone, The New Republic, 16 Apr. 2021
  • The political significance of Mr. Xi’s economic mercantilism is harder to predict.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 25 Sep. 2020
  • The economic priorities branch out into two further categories: (1) reducing distortions to the global economy caused by Chinese mercantilism or (2) reducing the bilateral trade deficit.
    Daniel Tenreiro, National Review, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Economic relations need to consider China’s often predatory mercantilism, IP theft and cyber spying.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 6 May 2021
  • This dichotomy suggests that citizens of Western democracies face a choice between a globalist economic and political order—of which stakeholder advocacy is a part—and a retreat into mercantilism, nativism and cultural stasis.
    Richard J. Shinder, WSJ, 26 Jan. 2020
  • Economists have begun to rethink the effectiveness of the postwar trade regime, thanks to China’s blatant mercantilism, theft of intellectual property, distortive subsidies, and determination to displace Western industry.
    Thomas J. Duesterberg, WSJ, 23 Apr. 2018
  • In negotiations aimed at least in part at curtailing Chinese mercantilism, American representatives requested that China direct bilateral trade from on high.
    Daniel Tenreiro, National Review, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Certainly, Trump’s agenda of closing the border, using tariffs to overturn a half-century of Chinese mercantilism, and pulling back from optional overseas military interventions variously offends both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
    Victor Davis Hanson, The Mercury News, 19 Sep. 2019
  • First, policymaking suffers as, instead of a coherent programme, America undergoes government by impulse—anger, nativism, mercantilism—beyond the reach of empirical argument.
    The Economist, 19 Apr. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mercantilism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: