There Are No 'Myths' Or Exceptions About Free Trade: It's Always Unrelentingly Good

Forbes ^ | Oct 9, 2016 @ 09:00 AM | John Tamny

[expat_panama]

For those who ever find themselves questioning the good of free trade, arguably the best cure for such a lapse of reason is a quick read of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson. In it Hazlitt wrote that “What is harmful or disastrous to an individual must be equally harmful or disastrous to the collection of individuals that make up a nation.”

Hazlitt’s powerful quote will cure Keynesians of just about everything they believe, including the horrid idea that war is good for the economy. As for conservatives who occasionally find themselves swimming in a protectionist direction, the Hazlitt quote is a cure-all. And it will perhaps save them from an op-ed similar to the one recently penned by Information Technology and Innovation Foundation president Robert Atkinson in National Review. In it he concluded that the merits of free trade are increasingly only known to ivory-tower based establishmentarians...

...Atkinson’s first error in an article filled with them was that he forgot that an economy is just a collection of people...

...industry critics’ claim that cutting prices wouldn’t affect R&D spending...

...At the end of the day, returns are determined by products’ future earnings, which depend crucially on price.

As a result, expectations around future prices drive investments for the same reason you would not put down $500,000 to build a house in a rapidly declining neighborhood if you hoped to sell your house for a profit one day. You have to be locked into your Ivory Tower without a key to believe that the venture capital and private equity firms who fund medical R&D do not care about future profitability in the same way. Because that’s pretty much all they care about, pricing drives R&D spending and not vice versa.

[expat_panama]

Long read, worth at least skimming...

[ConservativeMind]

And the benefits of no income, sales, property, business and other taxes and of no regulations are also unrelentingly good.

But we are currently stuck with those, and you always seem to post about the benefits of keeping the excise tax away. Why?

[impimp]

If Trump softens his trade rhetoric then people who have taken college level economics classes will be more likely to vote for him.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

Going Full Global, Patty?

[cdcdawg]

If I paint “Free Trade” on a turd, it will then be always, unrelentingly good.

[RckyRaCoCo]

bfl

[aumrl]

the key to your post is.... “college”

GI = GO

[SeeSharp]

If I paint “Free Trade” on a turd, it will then be always, unrelentingly good.

No, but if you find a market for turds it will benefit you to produce and sell them.

You bring up a good point. Two presidents sitting across a table taking turns at sprinkling economic favors on each other's political supporters is not free trade, and just calling it a free trade agreement does not make it so.

[reed13k]

This strikes me as the ‘tyranny of the good’.

Might as well say peace is unrelentingly good even in the face of abuse.

Of course there are exceptions to free trade - such as when free trade is abused by one side who refuses to comply with the agreement.

Beyond that I found the writing was “yawn”.

[mythenjoseph]

I tried to read all three pages , this man is out to lunch. he is so educated that he is unable to see the domino effect manufacturing has. A nation being able to support it’s own infrastructure has not only with all the supporting jobs (for workers in other fields) but the shrinkage of welfare so easily obtained from the states and fed. The less a government has to pay out (huge scams everywhere) for welfare/ebt cards and the fewer government employees along with a real positive tax pool from the nations workers will create a stable monetary pool to address natural disasters and international conflicts...what a freaking moonbat and the scary thing is he’s serious.

[MrEdd]

She appears to be.

[VitacoreVision]

How the Free Trade Agenda Is Knocking Down America
-- The New American (PDF) Special Report
http://www.thenewamerican.com/files/TNA2917.pdf

The Special Report includes the following articles:

- The "Free Trade" Agenda Threatens Our Rights
- Global Merger: Piece by Piece
- The EU: Regionalization Trumps Sovereignty
- Trade Promises... and Trade Reality
- North American Union: From NAFTA to the NAU
- Fast-track: Enabler of the "Free Trade" Agenda
- Regional Scheme for the Pacific Rim
- EU/U.S. -- Transatlantic Convergence

[central_va]

Trump softens his position on trade the county is finished you twit.

[VanDeKoik]

Between the U.S. and Canada, certainly extremely loose trade barriers makes perfect sense.

But unfortunately this isnt what people are talking about, and that isnt where our problems are.

[central_va]

Marx was a Free Trader, like you. I really don’t think you went to college. Did you ever read a history book about tariffs and the founding of the USA? Are really that stupid?

[central_va]

Why would Trump trade 30 million votes for 1 million?

[SoFloFreeper]

Seems to ME that Trump is for free trade as long as it is FAIR.

His objections that I have heard is that our trade partners are not being equitable in their trade policies.

[Socon-Econ]

The purely economic benefits of free trade are indeed clear. But globalism can’t be unfettered. We need to produce domestically military and other goods that we need to keep our independence as a nation. The globalists want us to get hooked on trade with secular socialist groups like the EU, who will try to ram their political values down our throats. It won’t be easy to balance these considerations, but we need to elect someone who will try.

[central_va]

A 20% tariff would put the breaks on the globalist’s plan for a NWO. Plus it would balance the budget.

[central_va]

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

Karl Marx