Chancellor Gordon Brown urged business leaders last night to embrace globalisation as a force for jobs and growth.
Addressing the Confederation of British Industry, he argued that new global competition presented opportunities for "prosperity through innovation and change".
"Embracing globalisation, not retreating into protectionism, is the best way to growth, jobs and prosperity for all," he told the CBI President's Dinner.
Mr Brown acknowledged that the public was "sceptical" about globalisation because of the perceived loss of jobs to overseas.
He said: "The problem is that it is the very essence of globalisation - free movement of goods and services, free movement of capital and free movement of labour - that is under simultaneous three fold attack by protectionism, this economic patriotism and rising anti- immigrant sentiment.
"The paradox of today's globalisation is that even its winners feel themselves to be losers.
"People who are benefiting from cheaper clothes, cheaper electronics goods still think of globalisation as job losses."
Mr Brown went on: "The simple fact is in the popular debate large numbers of people only see globalisation played out as threat.
"Yet for those of us who deal with it every day and know it is a fact and a challenge that must be met, we also know we have to bring all our experience to bear to show that globalisation will mean new opportunities, new markets, new jobs, new sources of prosperity."
Mr Brown also called for fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.
He said: "Europe should indicate that when it comes to review its budget and its agricultural policies the essential element of both will be a radical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and a timetable to end all forms of agricultural protectionism.
"CAP is a stain on our commitment to make globalisation work. Europe cannot tell developing countries to embrace globalisation without embracing change ourselves.
"So what better signal could Europe send of its commitment to wider economic reform, to completing the single market and our willingness to rise to the challenges of globalisation than a successful reform of agricultural protectionism?
"And what better signal could Europe and America send than action to break the deadlock in the wider world trade talks as a demonstration of our determination to fight protectionism and our belief in globalisation as a force for prosperity on a global scale?"
His speech followed earlier comments in which the Chancellor said immigrants to Britain should be required to learn the English language.
Mr Brown said he wanted people who had settled in the country and who had so far resisted learning English to be required to do so.
