YOU MIGHT think it odd that Peter Mandelson has the power to stop you wearing your favourite knickers, but he does. And he is exercising it.

In his capacity as EU Trade Commissioner, Mr Mandelson has ordered customs authorities to seize millions of items of clothing — trousers, shirts, sweaters and, yes, knickers — which high-street shops have imported to sell in their stores.

Mr Mandelson, who claims to be a believer in free trade, has decided that he must protect Europe’s textile industry from Chinese imports. Those dastardly Chinese, he has concluded, are committing the most appalling of crimes: they are selling their textiles too cheaply.

In January, the EU lifted its restrictions on cheap textile imports from China. You and I might have expected that imports would rise as a result, and quite right, too — that is what free trade is all about. But it seems that this outcome had not occurred to the geniuses in the Commission. So when some European manufacturers started squealing that they were losing business, Mr Mandelson’s response was not to tell them either to match the Chinese prices or move into a business where they were more competitive, but to impose quotas on Chinese imports.

Many clothes retailers, however, had already placed orders with Chinese manufacturers. Now that those orders are being delivered, customs authorities are impounding the clothing in a daily round of protectionism — 59 million sweaters and 16 million pairs of trousers so far.

In the great scheme of things, a shortage of trousers and blouses will not destroy the fabric of our society. But the EU’s behaviour in preaching one thing — free trade — and doing something very different — shutting out imports from the developing world — is all too typical.

We are hypocrites, and stupid too. When EU farmers sell their produce abroad their prices are kept artificially low by agricultural subsidies. For example, the EU pays 2.7 billion euros a year to farmers to grow sugar beet, and then offloads the resulting surpluses on the world market, undercutting the developing world’s unsubsidised growers. And we refuse to let them export to us. Not only does EU protectionism keep the poor in poverty, it also denies us access to cheaper goods. Everyone loses when Mr Mandelson decides to ban Chinese knickers.