[steveblgh]

Of course state protectionism might help local furniture manufacturers to catch up and grow their own business and that might actually benefit the Russian economy even more. Perhaps the legal, administrative burdens are there with a purpose, or maybe I'm reading too much into it...

[laut]

Protectionism is bad. It doesn't benefit an economy. It can benefit the protected industries short term as well as the people they bribe to get the protection. But overall it is bad.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage for instance.