“Buy local” measures by governments will jeopardise export sector jobs and risk setting the world on a damaging downward spiral of beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism, the head of the World Trade Organisation has warned.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Pascal Lamy, WTO director-general, said pressures for economic nationalism were an inevitable response to the global crisis, but in an integrated world economy such measures were much more dangerous than in the past.