What is mercantilism?

Question

what is mercantilism? don't give me word by word answers straight from wikipedia, because I have no idea what they're saying.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Mercantilism
The main economic system used during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The main goal was to increase a nation's wealth by imposing government regulation concerning all of the nation's commercial interests. It was believed that national strength could be maximized by limiting imports via tariffs and maximizing exports.

Investopedia Says:
This approach assumes the wealth of a nation depends primarily on the possession of precious metals such as gold and silver. This type of system cannot be maintained forever, because the global economy would become stagnant if every country wanted to export and no one wanted to import. After a period of time, many people began to revolt against the idea of mercantilism and stressed the need for free trade. The continued pressure resulted in the implementation of laissez faire economics in the nineteenth century.

Source(s):

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Answer 2

Mercantilism is an economic system that was popular in the 16th century. Basically, countries would try to get as much wealth into their country as they could. They would do this by exporting lots and lots of goods but importing little to no goods. That way they'd be receiving lots of gold and silver for their goods but not spending any gold and silver on buying goods from other countries.