Deep Dive: Protectionism and Trading Blocs

Compiled 2026-09-28. Grounded in research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md (Table of Contents; "Paper mechanics"; the §4.3.1 item-4 and item-5 narrative entries in full; the "protectionism-and-trading-blocs.ts (mark-scheme-bullet coverage audit) — audited 2026-09-13" log entry; its 2026-09-14 reconciliation entry; the "Third pass — REVISED 2026-09-25 content-gap audit" and "Trap-taxonomy density pass" entries; the "Topics with enough verified material" / "Flagged issues" sections; and, for one specific cross-check below, the "factors-driving-globalisation.ts — mark-scheme-bullet coverage audit (2026-09-13)" entry) — every citation below was re-checked against that file's own sourcing, not re-derived from memory. Cross-read before writing, to keep this document additive rather than a restatement: the live lesson content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/protectionism-and-trading-blocs.ts (read in full — its teach blocks, five worked chains, four level-exemplars, five MCQs and full trap-taxonomy are NOT reproduced here), codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md and forge-exam-technique-guide.md in this same folder (both read in full for their §4.3.1.4/4.3.1.5 sections), signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md's frequency rows for 4.3.1.4 and 4.3.1.5, and content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts (read in full — it carries three genuine, full worked-answer entries for this topic: the EU-fishing subsidy Discuss and both the January 2022 and June 2023 "impact on global businesses" Evaluate essays, none of which are re-typed here). No new primary source was fetched for this document; it synthesises citations the facts bank already carries into a shape none of the existing six documents provide.

#WBS14 CODEX Deep-Dive — Protectionism and Trading Blocs (spec 4.3.1.4–4.3.1.5)

#What this document is, and isn't

The lesson file already teaches every mechanism on this spec point through five worked chains (a Harley-Davidson tariff-retaliation case, the Turkey wheat-tariff diagram, a steel-producer subsidy chain-drill plus the real EU-fishing-subsidy case, the Indonesia quota case, a NAFTA/USMCA supply-chain case, and a customs-union external-tariff case), four level-exemplars, five MCQs and a dense trap-taxonomy. The definitions bank already carries full glossary entries for tariff, import quota, subsidy, VER, infant-industry argument, predatory pricing, trading bloc, free-trade area, customs union and single market. The question bank already carries three complete, real, five-level worked answers. None of that is repeated here.

What none of those six documents lay out is every real exam citation this specific spec point has actually produced, gathered in one place, organised by which of the spec's own seven lettered sub-parts each citation anchors, with the honest confidence flag each citation carries individually — so a reader can see at a glance which sub-parts have a genuine standalone anchor, which are only touched in passing inside a citation anchored elsewhere, and which have no real citation at all. That is what this document adds.

Scope discipline carried over from the facts bank itself: 5 of the roughly 15 series held since first assessment (June 2020) were read in full for the original paper-wide pass (October 2021, June 2022, January 2023, October 2023, January 2024). Protectionism (spec 4.3.1.4) was not hit as a standalone question in any of those five. Everything that closes that gap below came from later, narrower, targeted pulls — a single series, sometimes a single question — not a second full-series read. Every "confirmed" claim below names which specific pull it traces to, and every sourcing caveat the facts bank itself carries (a third-party mirror rather than a direct Pearson fetch; a targeted question-only pull rather than a full series review) is repeated here rather than silently dropped.

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#Part 1 — The seven lettered sub-parts: theory, real citation, and a short worked micro-example

#4.3.1.4(a) Reasons for protectionism

The mechanism. The spec's own wording is simply "reasons for protectionism" — it does not enumerate them. The lesson's own five-reason breakdown (infant-industry protection; shielding jobs in an established but declining industry; anti-dumping; national security/self-sufficiency; retaliation) is VERIDIAN's own organisation of standard content for this spec bullet, not a numbered list the spec text itself provides.

Evidence status — genuinely unconfirmed as its own question, honestly flagged. No pull run against this paper so far — the original five-series pass, nor any of the four later targeted pulls that closed gaps elsewhere on this spec point — has surfaced a mark-scheme or examiner-report question asking a candidate to explain or assess why a government protects, as its own standalone task. What real evidence does exist is indirect: retaliation specifically, one of the five textbook reasons, is independently corroborated as a real, credited consequence inside three separate later citations (the EU-fishing subsidy case, the Indonesia quota case, and the June 2023 impact-on-businesses essay — all below). That confirms retaliation is a mechanism Pearson's own mark schemes take seriously; it does not confirm "reasons for protectionism" itself has ever been the direct subject of a question.

Micro-example (spec-grounded, not exam-cited). A government facing a domestic industry it judges too small to compete internationally yet — solar-panel manufacturing, say — can shelter it behind a tariff specifically so it can reach competitive scale before protection is withdrawn; the same government facing an established car-parts industry losing ground to cheaper imports might protect it instead simply to preserve existing jobs, a different reason for the same tool. Neither example is drawn from a real WBS14 citation; both illustrate the spec's own unlisted "reasons" bullet honestly, not as exam-tested content.

#4.3.1.4(b) Tariffs

The mechanism. A tax on an imported good, raising its domestic price above the world price by the tariff amount and generating government revenue on every unit still imported — distinct from a quota (below) in that it works through price, not a hard quantity cap.

Real citation. October 2024, Q1(a)–(b) (Publications Code WBS14_01_2410_MS, Question Paper Log Number P78408A) — the first standalone protectionism mark-scheme question found for this paper, closing what had been a confirmed zero-of-five gap. Real case: a 130% tariff on wheat imported into Turkey, aimed at cutting wheat imports from Eastern Europe. Q1(a) (4 marks, Construct, quantitative skill QS3) asks for a supply-and-demand diagram showing the tariff's effect on Turkey's wheat market; the mark scheme's own note explicitly accepts either an ad valorem (percentage) or a specific/unit (fixed-amount) tariff shape as the same credited shift — a real, confirmed theoretical sub-case: the two tariff forms are economically distinct (a percentage tariff scales with world price; a fixed-amount one doesn't) but the mark scheme treats either diagram as equally creditable for this question. Q1(b) (4 marks, Explain) credits a downstream cost-passing chain: the tariff raises the domestic price of wheat, which raises production costs for businesses that use wheat as an input — bread and other foodstuffs named directly — which may in turn raise prices for consumers.

Sourcing caveat, repeated honestly. Fetched via a third-party mirror, not a direct qualifications.pearson.com pull; authenticity was checked structurally (Pearson copyright notice, Question Paper Log Number, Publications Code, and General Marking Guidance boilerplate all internally consistent with the other verified WBS14 series), not by a byte-for-byte comparison against a first-party copy.

Micro-example (the real percentage alone, no invented figures). A confirmed 130% tariff on Turkish wheat imports doesn't just raise the price a wheat importer pays — the mark scheme's own credited chain carries that cost past the importer, downstream to every business using wheat as an input, and from there to the consumers who buy what those businesses sell. One real percentage, one credited chain, three separate groups affected by a tariff levied on only the first of them.

#4.3.1.4(c) Import quotas

The mechanism. A direct limit on the physical quantity of a good that may be imported, working through quantity rather than price — a quota can't absorb a rise in demand with more imports the way a tariff-restricted quantity can, so a demand increase under a binding quota shows up entirely as a price rise instead. (This price-vs-quantity distinction is the same underlying economics the WEC14 Economics paper derives from the demand/supply side and this lesson's own trap-taxonomy already names — it remains spec-grounded theory rather than something a WBS14-specific mark scheme has independently confirmed as its own tested distinction.)

Real citation. June 2026, Q1(c) (Publications Code WBS14_01_2606_MS, Question Paper Log Number P79710A), an 8-mark Discuss on "the likely impact on Indonesian businesses of the reduction in quotas." Real case: Indonesia's own import quotas on corn, sugar and salt (a different commodity from the same extract set's nickel-mining content). The mark scheme's own indicative content, paraphrased, states the general purpose of the policy directly: import quotas are protectionism designed to reduce reliance on imports and encourage the use of domestic substitutes. It then credits three genuinely separate consequences for three separate groups of Indonesian businesses in the same answer: domestic corn, sugar and salt producers see rising demand, price and profit, likely drawing in new producers; businesses that import these commodities as a raw material (processed-food producers, named directly) face a cost rise whose effect on their own sales depends on price elasticity of demand for what they sell; and a third, uninvolved group — Indonesia's own exporters — face a real risk that countries losing this trade may "retaliate by imposing tariffs or quotas on Indonesian goods." No numeric coefficient (a quota size, a percentage change) appears anywhere in this specific question's indicative content.

Sourcing caveat, repeated honestly. Same third-party-mirror caveat as the tariff citation above — structurally verified, not compared byte-for-byte to a first-party Pearson copy. A 2026-10-01 independent audit pass could not relocate this citation anywhere on the open web and flagged it as this document's single most serious unverified claim. A follow-up search run specifically in response to that audit located a second, independent third-party mirror (alevelcopilot.com) carrying the identical Publications Code (WBS14_01_2606_MS) and Question Paper Log Number (P79710A), with indicative content matching this document's paraphrase point-for-point — including the exact phrase "retaliate by imposing tariffs or quotas on Indonesian goods." That is real, independent corroboration from a second source, stronger than the single-mirror structural check this caveat originally described — though still not a byte-for-byte comparison against a first-party qualifications.pearson.com copy, so the citation is corroborated, not first-party-confirmed.

Micro-example (three groups, one policy, no invented numbers). The same Indonesian quota reduction on corn, sugar and salt touches three separate groups through three separate mechanisms in the same real mark scheme: domestic substitute producers gain (demand, price and profit all rise); food processors that import these commodities as an input lose, by however much their own PED allows the extra cost to be passed on; and Indonesia's own exporters carry a retaliation risk they had no part in creating. A "who benefits" answer that names only the first group misses two-thirds of what this real question actually credits.

#4.3.1.4(d) Other trade barriers (government legislation, domestic subsidies)

The mechanism. The spec bundles two genuinely different tools under one lettered bullet: domestic subsidies (a government payment that lowers a domestic producer's own cost of production, letting otherwise-unviable producers survive and compete on price) and non-tariff, non-quota "other" barriers — technical/safety/quality standards, licensing requirements, and similar legislative tools not aimed at a specific import volume or price.

Real citation — subsidies only. October 2022, Q1(c) (Publications Code WBS14_01_2210_MS, Question Paper Log Number P72168A), an 8-mark Discuss: "Discuss the benefits for the EU fishing industry from receiving subsidies." Real, dated figures from the source extract: subsidies paid to the global fishing industry total around $35bn a year; the EU itself provided $2bn in 2018, ranking third behind China and Japan. The mark scheme credits the benefit side directly — a subsidy lets otherwise-struggling producers survive, lower prices, compete internationally, expand and gain market share — then balances it with three genuinely different kinds of cost, not one vague counterweight: competitive inefficiency (reduced competitive pressure on the subsidised producers themselves), retaliation (other fishing nations responding with their own subsidies or with tariffs on the now-subsidised EU exports), and a sustainability cost with no competitive mechanism behind it at all (the same extract's own claim that eliminating all fishing subsidies globally could let fish stocks recover by 12.5% by 2050).

"Other trade barriers" — genuinely unconfirmed. No pull run against this paper has surfaced a standalone question on technical/safety standards, licensing, or any other non-tariff/non-quota/ non-subsidy barrier. This sub-item remains real, mandatory, spec-certain content taught to the same standard as the confirmed parts, without a citation to attach to it.

Micro-example (the real figures alone). The EU's real $2bn 2018 fishing subsidy lets EU producers compete and expand — but the same mark scheme balances that against three separate real costs: growing inefficiency as competitive pressure eases, retaliation from nations that together pay $35bn a year in the same kind of subsidy, and a sustainability cost measured against a 12.5%-by-2050 fish-stock-recovery claim that has nothing to do with any competitor's response at all.

#4.3.1.4(e) Impact on businesses of protectionism

The mechanism. Not a separate policy tool alongside tariffs, quotas and subsidies — the spec's own instruction that all of 4.3.1.4's content only earns marks once brought back to what a named business actually experiences as a result.

Real citation — tested standalone in two independent series. January 2022, Q3 (Publications Code WBS14_01_2201), a 20-mark Evaluate: "Evaluate the impact on global businesses from increased protectionism." June 2023, Q3 (Publications Code WBS14_01_2306_MS, Question Paper Log Number P72046A), a 20-mark Evaluate, near-identically worded: "Evaluate the impact of protectionism on global businesses." Both mark schemes independently credit the identical real differentiator: inelastic PED means a tariff may have little real effect, illustrated in both by the same named example — "BMW and Jaguar cars sell well in the USA despite trade barriers" in January 2022, and the same sentence with one extra word in June 2023, "...despite trade barriers increasing" — the single most-repeated named fact anywhere on this spec point, credited twice across two separate series in near-identical wording. The June 2023 mark scheme alone additionally credits two further real points the January 2022 one doesn't carry: trade barriers have "a disproportionate effect on smaller businesses" that lack the economies of scale or lobbying power of larger rivals, and China is named directly as a country "often accused of using excessive subsidies to promote its industries," with Chinese businesses gaining at others' expense. The June 2023 mark scheme alone also credits that retaliation damages "not just those trying to export but... the costs and availability of raw materials" a global business imports for its own production — a genuinely separate, input-side channel from the export-side retaliation the quota citation above already illustrates. January 2022's full indicative content for this question carries no equivalent retaliation-specific input-cost point; its nearest related content is a different, non-retaliation-specific note that supply-chain disruption from trade barriers generally may reduce domestic production that uses imports as inputs.

Impact content embedded in other citations, not this one. The tariff citation's downstream cost-passing chain (b) and the quota citation's three-group consequence (c) are both, in substance, real "impact on businesses" content too — they simply arrived attached to the tariff/quota question that generated them rather than to a standalone 4.3.1.4(e) question. Treated separately in this table (Part 2 below) rather than merged, since each is anchored to its own real citation.

Micro-example (PED and the channel it doesn't cover). BMW and Jaguar selling well in the US despite tariffs is real, twice-credited evidence that inelastic export demand blunts a tariff's effect on sales — but the same June 2023 mark scheme names a second, separate channel that PED-inelastic export demand says nothing about: the cost of a business's own imported raw materials and components, which retaliation can raise regardless of how well the business's own finished product sells abroad. A business can be protected on one channel and exposed on the other at the same time.

#4.3.1.5(a) Expansion of trading blocs (EU and the single market; ASEAN; NAFTA)

The mechanism. The spec names exactly three blocs to know: the EU (a customs union with a single market layered on top — free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between members, not only tariff-free goods), ASEAN, and NAFTA (a free-trade-area-style bloc with no common external tariff, in force under that name until superseded by USMCA in 2020 — a real, public, easily verified fact, not mark-scheme content, and worth flagging precisely because the spec still uses the older name).

Real citation — ASEAN only. June 2022, Q1(e) (Publications Code WBS14_01_2206_MS, Question Paper Log Number P71450A), a 12-mark Assess on the impact on businesses in "countries such as Thailand and Vietnam" from their membership of a trading bloc. This is the paper's one genuinely confirmed standalone trading-bloc case, and it is ASEAN-anchored specifically. EU and NAFTA are not the central case in any series sampled or targeted so far — real, confirmed content in every respect, but citation-unconfirmed as the specific case a real question has been built around.

A second, weaker data point worth naming precisely — and a genuine imprecision in this facts bank's own earlier pass, corrected here. The facts bank's original §4.3.1.5 narrative entry states "AfCFTA (Senegal's membership) is the real case for Jan 2023 Q1(b)/(e)." A later, more rigorous pass — the 2026-09-13 bullet-by-bullet audit of the same January 2023 Q1(e) mark scheme, run for a different lesson (factors-driving-globalisation.ts) — extracted that question's full sixteen-bullet indicative content directly and found its real question is "Assess the role of reduced costs of transport and communication in increasing globalisation," anchored to spec 4.3.1.3, not 4.3.1.5. Trading blocs appear in that same indicative content only as bullet 13 of sixteen — paraphrased, "the expansion of trading blocs has done much to liberalise trade," naming the EU and, "more recently," the AfCFTA as its examples — a single supporting bullet inside a question about transport and communication costs, not a citation for "impact on businesses of trading blocs" at all. Q1(b) of that same series was not independently re-verified in either pass this document draws on. The earlier, less-precise characterisation is not corrected in this document's source file itself (outside this document's scope to silently rewrite another entry), but it should not be read as a second standalone trading-bloc citation on a par with the June 2022 ASEAN one — it is a passing mention inside a citation anchored elsewhere.

Micro-example (the real distinction that matters for a business, not just the bloc's name). Knowing "ASEAN, EU and NAFTA" by name earns nothing on its own; what changes for a business is the level of integration. A customs union member gains free internal trade but is bound by a shared external tariff against non-members (see (b) below); a free-trade-area member (NAFTA's structure) keeps its own external tariff but needs rules of origin to stop goods re-routing through the lowest-tariff member; a single market adds free movement of labour on top of a customs union, which a plain customs union does not provide.

#4.3.1.5(b) Impact on businesses of trading blocs

The mechanism. What bloc membership actually changes for a business, once the bloc itself is correctly identified.

Real citation, in full. The same June 2022 Q1(e) mark scheme above carries twelve indicative-content bullets — the fullest single indicative-content list found anywhere on this spec point. Paraphrased in full: a trading bloc is a group of countries with some form of trading agreement between them, based on free trade or preferential terms and reduced protectionism; RCEP is named as becoming the world's largest bloc (a real mark-scheme fact, but RCEP is not one of the three spec-named blocs — see the "correctly out of scope" note below); businesses inside a bloc gain easier access to fellow members' markets, increasing potential sales; they can also import inputs more cheaply from fellow members, cutting costs; freer trade lowers prices bloc-wide, which raises real disposable income, which raises demand for local businesses generally — including ones with no bloc-partner supplier or customer of their own. Balanced against this: domestic industries lose the protection they had, becoming relatively less competitive; low-cost bloc-partner producers can more easily penetrate the home market; China's place inside RCEP specifically is credited as a competitive threat to smaller neighbours (again, correctly out of scope for this spec's three named blocs); increased competition can mean lower sales and profits for domestic incumbents; and — the one mechanism most answers miss entirely — a customs union's own common external tariff can raise the cost of inputs a member's business still sources from outside the bloc, a genuinely different cost channel from ordinary import competition. The mark scheme's own closing line notes plainly that many countries still join blocs despite these costs, implying the benefits generally outweigh them for those that do.

Examiner evidence on how candidates actually did. The paired examiner's report for this same series (Publications Code WBS14_01_2206_ER) states this question "was mostly well answered," with both the benefit side (cheaper inputs, larger market access) and the balancing competitive-threat side "usually shown" by candidates — independently re-checked directly against the primary report. This is the one sub-part on this whole spec area where the real evidence shows candidates reaching genuine two-sided balance as the default outcome, not something that needed correcting.

Micro-example (the mechanism most answers skip). A member of a customs union gets tariff-free trade with fellow members — but the same customs union's shared external tariff against non-members can raise costs for a business inside the bloc that still buys components from outside it. Cheaper inputs from one direction and a real cost from the other, inside the same membership, is the specific balance the real mark scheme's own twelfth-of-twelve bullet credits and that a benefits-only answer misses entirely.

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#Part 2 — Complete real exam-citation inventory for spec 4.3.1.4–4.3.1.5

Every row is a real, independently-verified mark-scheme or examiner-report citation the facts bank carries for this spec point specifically. Nothing below is invented, estimated, or given a likelihood — only what was actually found, in which specific series, with its own confidence flag.

Not in this table: the wholly VERIDIAN-original worked chains and level-exemplars the lesson itself uses to teach content with no real citation at all (the Harley-Davidson 2018 EU–US motorcycle-tariff case; the steel-producer subsidy chain-drill; the NAFTA/USMCA supply-chain case; the EU hormone-treated-beef example) are deliberately excluded here — they are real-world-grounded teaching content, not exam citations, and this table's purpose is to inventory the latter only.

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#Part 3 — Confirmed vs. not-yet-confirmed, honestly

Five of the seven lettered sub-parts (b, c, d-subsidies, e, 5b) have a genuine standalone citation; one (a-reasons) has none at all, corroborated only indirectly through one of its five textbook reasons (retaliation) appearing as a consequence elsewhere; and 5(a) is confirmed for one of its three named blocs (ASEAN) with the other two (EU, NAFTA) real and mandatory but citation-unconfirmed as the central case.

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#Part 4 — Cross-citation synthesis: what the evidence as a whole actually shows

Six things are visible only once all eight rows above are read together, rather than one at a time inside the lesson that teaches each in isolation.

1. Every real protectionism citation (b–e) arrived through a targeted, single-series pull — none through the original systematic five-series pass. The original pass found zero protectionism citations across five full series; four separate, later, narrower pulls (each aimed at a specific gap, not a fresh full-series read) found one citation each. This is the clearest structural case on this paper of the facts bank's own standing discipline that a "0 of 5" result means "not yet verified," not "not tested" — the content was there in series the systematic pass simply hadn't opened.
2. Retaliation is the single most-repeated real mechanism across the whole spec point, and no two citations use the same channel for it. It appears, independently, in the subsidy citation (other nations counter-subsidising or tariffing EU fish exports), the quota citation (countries losing export trade tariffing or quota-ing Indonesian goods in response), and the impact-essay citation (raising the cost of a global business's own imported inputs). Three real citations, three genuinely different retaliation channels — a strong "impact of protectionism" answer has more than one real version of this mechanism available to it, not only one.
3. The BMW/Jaguar PED-inelastic example is the single most-repeated named fact on this entire spec point, confirmed in near-identical wording across two independent series (June 2023 adds one extra word, "increasing," to the sentence January 2022 uses). No other specific fact — not the 130% Turkish tariff, not the EU's $2bn subsidy — is independently confirmed twice. If only one fact from this whole document had to be retained for the 20-mark essay specifically, the evidence weights it as this one, with the explicit caveat (real, mark-scheme-stated) that it only covers a business's export-side exposure, not its input-cost exposure.
4. This spec point's confirmed citations cluster at both ends of the mark range, not the middle. Two 4-mark citations (Turkey), two 8-mark Discuss citations (EU fishing, Indonesia quota), two 20-mark Evaluate citations (Jan22, Jun23) and one 12-mark Assess citation (trading blocs) are confirmed; no confirmed 6-mark Analyse citation exists anywhere on this spec point. Contrast with spec 4.3.1.3 (factors driving globalisation), where four of five confirmed citations are the 12-mark Assess specifically — a genuinely different real distribution, worth knowing when allocating revision time by command word rather than assuming every spec point on this paper skews the same way.
5. The two most recently closed gaps (tariffs, quotas) carry the weakest sourcing of any citation on this spec point. Both October 2024 and June 2026 were fetched via a third-party mirror and verified only structurally (copyright notice, log number, publication code, boilerplate match) rather than compared byte-for-byte against a first-party Pearson copy — the same standing caveat the facts bank itself carries for both. This doesn't make either citation less real; it does mean the two citations that close the two largest historical gaps on this spec point are, honestly, its two least-independently-verified.
6. A genuine, unresolved inconsistency between two files in this course, surfaced by reading them side by side rather than in isolation — flagged, not silently resolved. content/veridian/ question-bank/wbs14.ts carries a full, specific, verified: true Examiner's Report entry for both the January 2022 and June 2023 impact-on-businesses essays (candidates "did not read the question carefully enough" and "launched into a generic... answer on the pros and cons of protectionism in general," Jan22; candidates who wrote "all they knew about the pros and cons of protectionism," but from the wrong perspective — the consumer and the economy, not global businesses — for Jun23). But the facts bank's own most recent pass on this exact spec point — the "Trap-taxonomy density pass," REVISED 2026-09-25 — states that no Examiner's Report "for October 2022, January 2022 or June 2023 was ever fetched for this course," only Mark Scheme documents, and built two new trap-taxonomy items specifically because no examiner-reported error existed to cite instead. Both cannot be fully accurate as stated. The more likely resolution is a scope gap (the trap-taxonomy pass's own search not covering wherever the question-bank entries' source PDFs were actually found), not a fabrication in either file — but this document does not have the primary-source access to confirm that, and does not assert either file is the correct one. What IS safe to say, and is confirmed independently by the June 2022 trading-bloc citation regardless of how this resolves: real candidate-error evidence exists for at least one sub-part of this spec area (trading blocs, "usually shown" balance, confirmed via the mark scheme's own paired report) and is genuinely contested for another (the impact-on-businesses essay). A future pass should re-fetch the January 2022 and June 2023 documents directly and settle which of these two files is stale.

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#Sources checked for this document

research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md — Table of Contents (spec 4.3.1.4/4.3.1.5 wording); "Paper mechanics"; the main §4.3.1 item-4 and item-5 narrative entries in full, including both dated UPDATE paragraphs; the "protectionism-and-trading-blocs.ts (mark-scheme-bullet coverage audit) — audited 2026-09-13" log entry and its 2026-09-14 reconciliation entry; the "Third pass — REVISED 2026-09-25 content-gap audit" and "Trap-taxonomy density pass" entries; the "Topics with enough verified material" and "Flagged issues" sections; and, for the Jan 2023 precision cross-check in Part 1, the "factors-driving-globalisation.ts — mark-scheme-bullet coverage audit (2026-09-13)" entry in full. content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/protectionism-and-trading-blocs.ts — read in full to confirm what is already taught, so nothing here duplicates its worked chains, level-exemplars, MCQs or trap-taxonomy. content/veridian/technique-hub/wbs14/codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md and forge-exam-technique-guide.md — read in full for the same non-duplication check. content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts — read in full; contains three complete worked-answer entries for this spec point (EU fishing subsidies; January 2022 and June 2023 impact-on-businesses essays), none reproduced here.