How to Use protectionist in a Sentence

protectionist

noun
  • So many protectionist policies have popped up in the last three to four months.
    — Eben Shapiro, Time, 21 Feb. 2021
  • If so, this episode contains a warning for protectionists who seem oblivious.
    — George Will, National Review, 25 Aug. 2019
  • Biden’s decision to block the sale shows that even staunch allies like Japan are not immune to the swelling protectionist tide.
    — Spencer Kimball, CNBC, 3 Jan. 2025
  • But Trump protectionists have planted a few land mines in the otherwise valuable agenda.
    — Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 23 July 2017
  • When it’s awarded to a protectionist, that doesn’t bode well for American tech companies.
    — Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 20 Oct. 2020
  • But protectionists now risk mirroring the pro-trade side’s earlier mistake.
    — Heather Wilhelm, National Review, 22 Feb. 2024
  • The real divide over TPP was not between free traders and protectionists.
    — Reihan Salam, Slate Magazine, 25 Jan. 2017
  • The one on steel includes pleas from otherwise-ardent protectionists to spare Canada.
    — The Economist, 22 Feb. 2018
  • Populists, protectionists, fossil-fuel lobbies, to name a few.
    — Natalie Unterstell, Time, 6 Nov. 2025
  • For the trade protectionists and anti-globalists, the coronavirus epidemic makes the case against free trade.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 26 Mar. 2020
  • Is this really just about China, or a more general (here’s that word Tai hates again) protectionist turn?
    — Dylan Matthews, Vox, 27 June 2024
  • While the administration has dressed up its order in high-minded terms, the change is blatantly protectionist.
    — Iain Murray, National Review, 27 Sep. 2024
  • Some lawyers argue convincingly that the rules are outdated and protectionist.
    — Jeff Kauflin, Forbes.com, 21 Aug. 2025
  • Trump has long argued that protectionist trade policies are the only way to preserve and grow American factory jobs.
    — Greg Iacurci, CNBC, 3 Apr. 2025
  • But for protectionists [such as Navarro], that’s bad because there will be more foreign owners of US assets.
    — Joseph N. Distefano, Philly.com, 8 Mar. 2018
  • The choice of a foreign company from an ally nation for the first grant appears in part to be an effort to address criticism that the program is protectionist.
    — Eva Dou, Washington Post, 12 Dec. 2023
  • Just how protectionist is the United States relative to other countries?
    — Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 8 Apr. 2025
  • That discourse feels quaint a decade or so later; despite what American protectionist impulses may linger, rap is now the lingua franca of youth.
    — Meaghan Garvey, Pitchfork, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Ryan was always an outspoken free trader and believer in the power of markets; Trump is a protectionist who has pursued tariffs and started a trade war.
    — James Hohmann, Washington Post, 12 Apr. 2018
  • The laws of economics bend for no political movement, and the higher prices that inevitably result from tariffs will make clear to voters how badly the protectionists have misled them.
    — David B. McGarry, Baltimore Sun, 30 Mar. 2025
  • But the pendulum has been swinging in recent years, not for the first time in American history, toward a more inward-looking and protectionist approach.
    — Ned Temko, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Nov. 2024
  • However his rhetoric and actions reveal the heart of a classic protectionist with a deeply troubling misunderstanding about how to analyze the meaning of trade flows in today’s world.
    — WSJ, 6 Aug. 2017
  • No nation has been more of a protectionist than France, which has mandated that the services invest at least 20% of their revenue from within the country into local programming.
    — Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg.com, 8 June 2023
  • The World Trade Organization, citing the damage that protectionist policies could pose, has urged countries to keep trade open to combat the negative effects of climate change.
    — Keith Bradsher, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Sep. 2022
  • Muddling the picture even further are trading alliances from Africa to Asia strained by three years of tariff wars and protectionist sentiment only heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
    — Shawn Donnan, Bloomberg.com, 20 Oct. 2020
  • Modern-day protectionists have seized on it to cast Reagan as something less than a free trader, and fans of the current president have used these sentiments to link The Gipper to The Donald.
    — Joseph Thorndike, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Their attorney, Matt Liles of the Institute for Justice, described the laws as protectionist and unfair for private businesses like Caskets of Honor.
    — Dale Denwalt, Oklahoman, 6 Feb. 2026
  • China criticized the European Union’s in-depth probe into subsidies for Chinese wind power companies, calling the move protectionist and vowing it would take action to protect the country’s interests.
    — Alfred Cang, Fortune, 5 Feb. 2026
  • The trade tensions had flared after Brussels slapped tariffs of up to 45% in October last year on electric vehicles imported from China, drawing Beijing to denounce it as protectionist.
    — Anniek Bao, CNBC, 16 Dec. 2025
  • African calls for beneficiation, industrialization, and value addition were portrayed as economically naïve or protectionist.
    — W. Gyude Moore, semafor.com, 25 May 2026

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

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