does anyone know more about this? Gordon Brown mentions it alot but i only know what ive seen on the news about it

Imnot so good at english, but I understand it is when the goverment creates measures or some laws are aproved to protect some corporations, this to prevent the fall of the national economy. You can block foreign products or put more taxes on them so that the national products compete better, or u can put money into a corporation to prevent it from going to bankrupcy.
This pisses off some people because it isnt part of the competition there should be in the market, its like if they are doing well, fine, the state doesnt meddle or cant put restrictions but they ask for help when they loose, and the goverment with public money has to fix their mistakes.

Thats what I think I understand, I would like someone with more experience to share it with us.

Its pretty much when a country passes legislation or adopts policies that favor its economic interests over others. While its impossible to avoid some level of protectionism, protectionism really doesn't benefit anyone.  Typical examples of protectionism are exceptionally high tariffs.

Now sometimes people think that promoting fair trade and protectionism are the same thing. In some instances, countires are using unfair trade practices and taking advantage of the market. This is not fair trade.

China does this all the time. They don't allow their currency to fluctuate easily on the world market. This gives them an unfair market advantage because there goods are artificially cheaper than they should be. It also has severely hurt our currency. That policy is a protectionist policy.

Furthermore, many of their companies, at least in the past, would "dump" products on the U.S. market below the cost at which they were built to drive other manufacturers out of business. That is not fair trade. If anything, that is something akin to protectionism since the Chinese government would often give them money back.  Setting a policy that doesn't allow a country to ship these products to your country isn't protectionist per se, but on its face it looks like protectionism.  In reality it is just setting fair trade standards.

So essentially, protectionism is a bad thing. However, not everything that people call protectionism is actually protectionism. Setting fair trade standards rather than allowing countries to do whatever they want is not protectionism, its essentially just setting rules that everyone must follow.

But ironically, tell someone that farm subsidies are protectionist and they will tell you that you are unamerican. While there are advantages to farm subsidies (which have gotten out of control by the way), they are a protectionist policy plain and simple. Anyone who tells you otherwise is ignoring the facts.