Can Europe afford a Russia trade war?

“We’ve known for more than 100 years that protectionism and trade barriers are very bad for your economy”.

So says Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, a trade lawyer and director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based think tank. The evidence backs him up.

But such considerations did not stop Brussels from effectively waging a trade war on Russia this month – its ban on bond sales to some Russian banks and on sales of high-end technology to Russian oil firms ...