Mercantilism’s “Return” and Function of Neo-Mercantilism in Contemporary Political Economy Written by Ahmed Fatih Andı Introduction During the 20 th and 21 st centuries, many times, return or “strike back”s of the mercantilism have been argued within a diverse variety of different contexts such as the interwar economy, autarky, fascist economic idea of corporatism, colonialist trans-Atlantic economies, as well as globalizing modern day economics and so forth. As an opposing theoretical school to the liberalism (Rodrik, 2013a), “in truth, mercantilism never went away” writes Dani Rodrik (2013b). Is he right? Throughout this paper, I am going to focus on the subject of neo-mercantilism’s theoretical premises, its function in the contemporary political economy and I am going to question its so-called return within the cases of EU and USA. Recent Instances on the “Return” Many academic and non-academic commentators proclaimed the return of mercantilism (while even some others denied mercantilism’s very existence as a proper and consistent school of economic thought, see (Coleman, 1980, 791) ) by referring to new centralist and protectionist economic policies which states decided to implement. Some European Union countries disfavored, and disfavors the outer trade and conceived the European Union. Some stated that the EU “turns inwards” (Tilford, 2008). This turning inwards has been consolidated by France-Germany trade agreement of 2007. French Prime 1