International trade is expanding at unprecedented rates. The dollar volume of trade today is nearly 90 times larger than it was in 1950. During the last 25 years, total annual foreign direct investment has skyrocketed from $14 billion to $350 billion.

Yet laws and regulations ostensibly designed to "save" or "protect" workers' jobs from the effects of foreign competition still abound -- exacting a heavy price on consumers, critics point out.

• In 1994, tariffs protected 190,000 jobs in 21 U.S. industries -- at a cost of $32.3 billion or $170,000 per job.

• Protective tariffs for 47 Japanese industries saved about 180,000 jobs in 1989 -- but cost consumers about $110 billion, or $600,000 per saved job.

• In 1990, tariff protection for 20 industries in the European Union saved about 1.5 million jobs -- at a cost of about $100 billion to European consumers, roughly $70,000 per job.

But after both developed and developing countries reduced their tariffs on industrial goods during the Uruguay Round of GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), the result was a net gain for the world of about $250 billion, according to estimates by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The OECD predicts that if wealthy countries would just lift trade restraints on textiles and clothing, an annual global gain of around $23 billion would ensue -- more than half of which would go to the U.S.

In a new study, the OECD says that countries with strong pro-trade policies enjoy average annual growth rates of about 6 percent -- while those whose policies are protectionist lose ground.