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THE CASE FOR FREE TRADE
Hoover Digest (1997 No. 4) ^ | 1997 | Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman

Posted on 08/05/2003 9:34:52 AM PDT by 1rudeboy


HOOVER INSTITUTION

HOOVER DIGEST
1997 No. 4

Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman

THE CASE FOR FREE TRADE

In international trade, Hoover fellow Charles Wolf Jr. argues in a previous article, deficits don't much matter. Here the Friedmans discuss what does: freedom. A ringing statement of logic and principle.

It is often said that bad economic policy reflects disagreement among the experts; that if all economists gave the same advice, economic policy would be good. Economists often do disagree, but that has not been true with respect to international trade. Ever since Adam Smith there has been virtual unanimity among economists, whatever their ideological position on other issues, that international free trade is in the best interests of trading countries and of the world. Yet tariffs have been the rule. The only major exceptions are nearly a century of free trade in Great Britain after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, thirty years of free trade in Japan after the Meiji Restoration, and free trade in Hong Kong under British rule. The United States had tariffs throughout the nineteenth century, and they were raised still higher in the twentieth century, especially by the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill of 1930, which some scholars regard as partly responsible for the severity of the subsequent depression. Tariffs have since been reduced by repeated international agreements, but they remain high, probably higher than in the nineteenth century, though the vast changes in the kinds of items entering international trade make a precise comparison impossible.

Today, as always, there is much support for tariffs--euphemistically labeled "protection," a good label for a bad cause. Producers of steel and steelworkers' unions press for restrictions on steel imports from Japan. Producers of TV sets and their workers lobby for "voluntary agreements" to limit imports of TV sets or components from Japan, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Producers of textiles, shoes, cattle, sugar--they and myriad others complain about "unfair" competition from abroad and demand that government do something to "protect" them. Of course, no group makes its claims on the basis of naked self-interest. Every group speaks of the "general interest," of the need to preserve jobs or to promote national security. The need to strengthen the dollar vis-à-vis the deutsche mark or the yen has more recently joined the traditional rationalizations for restrictions on imports.

One voice that is hardly ever raised is the consumer's. That voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the "interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers" and their employees. The result is a serious distortion of the issue. For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number--for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs--jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.

Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

The misleading terminology we use reflects these erroneous ideas. "Protection" really means exploiting the consumer. A "favorable balance of trade" really means exporting more than we import, sending abroad goods of greater total value than the goods we get from abroad. In your private household, you would surely prefer to pay less for more rather than the other way around, yet that would be termed an "unfavorable balance of payments" in foreign trade.

The argument in favor of tariffs that has the greatest emotional appeal to the public at large is the alleged need to protect the high standard of living of American workers from the "unfair" competition of workers in Japan or Korea or Hong Kong who are willing to work for a much lower wage. What is wrong with this argument? Don't we want to protect the high standard of living of our people?

The fallacy in this argument is the loose use of the terms "high" wage and "low" wage. What do high and low wages mean? American workers are paid in dollars; Japanese workers are paid in yen. How do we compare wages in dollars with wages in yen? How many yen equal a dollar? What determines the exchange rate?

Consider an extreme case. Suppose that, to begin with, 360 yen equal a dollar. At this exchange rate, the actual rate of exchange for many years, suppose that the Japanese can produce and sell everything for fewer dollars than we can in the United States--TV sets, automobiles, steel, and even soybeans, wheat, milk, and ice cream. If we had free international trade, we would try to buy all our goods from Japan. This would seem to be the extreme horror story of the kind depicted by the defenders of tariffs--we would be flooded with Japanese goods and could sell them nothing.

Before throwing up your hands in horror, carry the analysis one step further. How would we pay the Japanese? We would offer them dollar bills. What would they do with the dollar bills? We have assumed that at 360 yen to the dollar everything is cheaper in Japan, so there is nothing in the U.S. market that they would want to buy. If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury the dollar bills, that would be wonderful for us. We would get all kinds of goods for green pieces of paper that we can produce in great abundance and very cheaply. We would have the most marvelous export industry conceivable.

Of course, the Japanese would not in fact sell us useful goods in order to get useless pieces of paper to bury or burn. Like us, they want to get something real in return for their work. If all goods were cheaper in Japan than in the United States at 360 yen to the dollar, the exporters would try to get rid of their dollars, would try to sell them for 360 yen to the dollar in order to buy the cheaper Japanese goods. But who would be willing to buy the dollars? What is true for the Japanese exporter is true for everyone in Japan. No one will be willing to give 360 yen in exchange for one dollar if 360 yen will buy more of everything in Japan than one dollar will buy in the United States. The exporters, on discovering that no one will buy their dollars at 360 yen, will offer to take fewer yen for a dollar. The price of the dollar in terms of the yen will go down--to 300 yen for a dollar or 250 yen or 200 yen. Put the other way around, it will take more and more dollars to buy a given number of Japanese yen. Japanese goods are priced in yen, so their price in dollars will go up. Conversely, U.S. goods are priced in dollars, so the more dollars the Japanese get for a given number of yen, the cheaper U.S. goods become to the Japanese in terms of yen.

The price of the dollar in terms of yen would fall, until, on the average, the dollar value of goods that the Japanese buy from the United States roughly equaled the dollar value of goods that the United States buys from Japan. At that price everybody who wanted to buy yen for dollars would find someone who was willing to sell him yen for dollars.

The actual situation is, of course, more complicated than this hypothetical example. Many nations, and not merely the United States and Japan, are engaged in trade, and the trade often takes roundabout directions. The Japanese may spend some of the dollars they earn in Brazil, the Brazilians in turn may spend those dollars in Germany, the Germans in the United States, and so on in endless complexity. However, the principle is the same. People, in whatever country, want dollars primarily to buy useful items, not to hoard, and there can be no balance of payments problem so long as the price of the dollar in terms of the yen or the deutsche mark or the franc is determined in a free market by voluntary transactions.

Why then all the furor about the "weakness" of the dollar? Why the repeated foreign exchange crises? The proximate reason is because foreign exchange rates have not been determined in a free market. Government central banks have intervened on a grand scale in order to influence the price of their currencies. In the process they have lost vast sums of their citizens' money (for the United States, close to two billion dollars from 1973 to early 1979). Even more important, they have prevented this important set of prices from performing its proper function. They have not been able to prevent the basic underlying economic forces from ultimately having their effect on exchange rates but have been able to maintain artificial exchange rates for substantial intervals. The effect has been to prevent gradual adjustment to the underlying forces. Small disturbances have accumulated into large ones, and ultimately there has been a major foreign exchange "crisis."

We could say to the rest of the world: We cannot force you to be free. But we believe in freedom and we intend to practice it.

In all the voluminous literature of the past several centuries on free trade and protectionism, only three arguments have ever been advanced in favor of tariffs that even in principle may have some validity.

First is the national security argument--the argument that a thriving domestic steel industry, for example, is needed for defense. Although that argument is more often a rationalization for particular tariffs than a valid reason for them, it cannot be denied that on occasion it might justify the maintenance of otherwise uneconomical productive facilities. To go beyond this statement of possibility and establish in a specific case that a tariff or other trade restriction is justified in order to promote national security, it would be necessary to compare the cost of achieving the specific security objective in alternative ways and establish at least a prima facie case that a tariff is the least costly way. Such cost comparisons are seldom made in practice.

The second is the "infant industry" argument advanced, for example, by Alexander Hamilton in his Report on Manufactures. There is, it is said, a potential industry that, if once established and assisted during its growing pains, could compete on equal terms in the world market. A temporary tariff is said to be justified in order to shelter the potential industry in its infancy and enable it to grow to maturity, when it can stand on its own feet. Even if the industry could compete successfully once established, that does not of itself justify an initial tariff. It is worthwhile for consumers to subsidize the industry initially--which is what they in effect do by levying a tariff--only if they will subsequently get back at least that subsidy in some other way, through prices lower than the world price or through some other advantages of having the industry. But in that case is a subsidy needed? Will it then not pay the original entrants into the industry to suffer initial losses in the expectation of being able to recoup them later? After all, most firms experience losses in their early years, when they are getting established. That is true if they enter a new industry or if they enter an existing one. Perhaps there may be some special reason why the original entrants cannot recoup their initial losses even though it may be worthwhile for the community at large to make the initial investment. But surely the presumption is the other way.

The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up. Once imposed, tariffs are seldom eliminated. Moreover, the argument is seldom used on behalf of true unborn infants that might conceivably be born and survive if given temporary protection; they have no spokesmen. It is used to justify tariffs for rather aged infants that can mount political pressure.

The third argument for tariffs that cannot be dismissed out of hand is the "beggar-thy-neighbor" argument. A country that is a major producer of a product, or that can join with a small number of other producers that together control a major share of production, may be able to take advantage of its monopoly position by raising the price of the product (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel is the obvious example). Instead of raising the price directly, the country can do so indirectly by imposing an export tax on the product--an export tariff. The benefit to itself will be less than the cost to others, but from the national point of view, there can be a gain. Similarly, a country that is the primary purchaser of a product--in economic jargon, has monopsony power--may be able to benefit by driving a hard bargain with the sellers and imposing an unduly low price on them. One way to do so is to impose a tariff on the import of the product. The net return to the seller is the price less the tariff, which is why this can be equivalent to buying at a lower price. In effect, the tariff is paid by the foreigners (we can think of no actual example). In practice this nationalistic approach is highly likely to promote retaliation by other countries. In addition, as for the infant industry argument, the actual political pressures tend to produce tariff structures that do not in fact take advantage of any monopoly or monopsony positions.

A fourth argument, one that was made by Alexander Hamilton and continues to be repeated down to the present, is that free trade would be fine if all other countries practiced free trade but that, so long as they do not, the United States cannot afford to. This argument has no validity whatsoever, either in principle or in practice. Other countries that impose restrictions on international trade do hurt us. But they also hurt themselves. Aside from the three cases just considered, if we impose restrictions in turn, we simply add to the harm to ourselves and also harm them as well. Competition in masochism and sadism is hardly a prescription for sensible international economic policy! Far from leading to a reduction in restrictions by other countries, this kind of retaliatory action simply leads to further restrictions.

We are a great nation, the leader of the world. It ill behooves us to require Hong Kong and Taiwan to impose export quotas on textiles to "protect" our textile industry at the expense of U.S. consumers and of Chinese workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We speak glowingly of the virtues of free trade, while we use our political and economic power to induce Japan to restrict exports of steel and TV sets. We should move unilaterally to free trade, not instantaneously but over a period of, say, five years, at a pace announced in advance.

Few measures that we could take would do more to promote the cause of freedom at home and abroad than complete free trade. Instead of making grants to foreign governments in the name of economic aid--thereby promoting socialism--while at the same time imposing restrictions on the products they produce--thereby hindering free enterprise--we could assume a consistent and principled stance. We could say to the rest of the world: We believe in freedom and intend to practice it. We cannot force you to be free. But we can offer full cooperation on equal terms to all. Our market is open to you without tariffs or other restrictions. Sell here what you can and wish to. Buy whatever you can and wish to. In that way cooperation among individuals can be worldwide and free.


Adapted from "The Tyranny of Controls" in Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, © 1980. To order, call 800-543-1918. Available from the Hoover Press is The Essence of Friedman, edited by Kurt R. Leube. To order, call 800-935-2882.


Milton Friedman is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1976. Rose Friedman studied economics as a graduate student at the University of Chicago and has collaborated with Milton Friedman on several books.



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: deficit; export; freetrade; import; leftwingactivists; protectionism; tariff; trade
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Sadly, it appears that the Charles Wolf Jr. article mentioned at the top is unavailable on the Web. For a related article, please see Daniel J. Mitchell's In Defense of "Trade Deficits" here on Free Republic. Also, please note that the Friedmans' article is an excerpt of the printed version that appeared in the Hoover Digest, which itself is an excerpt of the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich version. In other words, an argument that the Friedmans' analysis is "incomplete" should fall upon deaf ears.

For a valuable dictionary of economic terminology, please refer to the Economist online (protectionists don't bother, you'll have to re-define your terms elsewhere).

Please see the Friedmans' response to the "emotional" argument that off-shoring work to countries with lower labor wage rates will result in a reduction of our standard of living, beginning on paragraph six.

Also please see the Friedmans' response to the arguments in favor of tariffs immediately after the high-lighted portion near the center of the article.

And please, refrain from making the illogical and utterly laughable argument that "Karl Marx 'approved' of free trade, therefore Milton Friedman is a Marxist." Even Pat Buchanan doesn't.

This article posted for educational purposes only.

1 posted on 08/05/2003 9:34:52 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy
"Free Trade" all to often translates to a subsidy entailing socialized risk.
2 posted on 08/05/2003 9:41:24 AM PDT by Carry_Okie
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To: 1rudeboy
It hinges on a "all things being equal" assumption.

Who in their right mind wants to start a business here in the 'States (or continue to run one) with such draconian taxes, regulations up the wazoo, and hovering trial lawyers and government bureaucrats just waiting for a piece of the action?
3 posted on 08/05/2003 9:41:50 AM PDT by P.O.E.
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To: 1rudeboy
placeholder
4 posted on 08/05/2003 9:44:38 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: P.O.E.
I disagree about your "hinge." When regulations for conducting business become too onerous here in the States, then companies will flee off-shore. When enough companies flee off-shore, then Congress will be forced to act to reduce the level of onerous regulations.
5 posted on 08/05/2003 9:46:20 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy
We have got to start Outsourcing these economists ASAP !!
6 posted on 08/05/2003 9:47:52 AM PDT by underbyte (Arrogance will drop your IQ 50 points)
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To: underbyte
[chortle] But from my standpoint, economists of the Chicago School are a national treasure.
7 posted on 08/05/2003 9:51:24 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy
I don't see "slavery" included in the Friedmans' analysis. Nor do I see "environment." And their argument against propping up wages seems to me weak. The Japanese hoard dollars because their own economy and government is weak- why should we interfere with their decisions by undermining our own government and economy with "free trade" policies? Just to be nice? Japan has virtually no natural resources and the US has plenty, with a few exceptions that can be remedied by trade. Not necessarily "free" trade, but fair trade. As we have done for the first 200 years of our existence as a nation. The Friedmans make no mention of that. Japan is "free" to get natural resources from us (such as wood, iron, etc.) in return for manufactured goods. They trade cheap labor for natural resources. That's the way trade works. There is no level playing field in the real world.

The Friedmans make no mention of externalities such as slave labor, child labor, or the environment, and no mention of downwards harmonization which is an integral part of "free trade" not because they don't know about these factors, but because it does not benefit their argument.

Sorry, the Friedmans are a complete fraud in terms of economic analysis of free trade. (I might add, so are most of the other economists. And it's an outright LIE that all economists favor free trade. Sheesh.)

NEXT...

8 posted on 08/05/2003 9:51:28 AM PDT by SteveH
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To: 1rudeboy
these economists are costing us to much money. We need a cheaper solution for the consumer, Let's bring in the Indians and they can train their replacements.
9 posted on 08/05/2003 9:58:09 AM PDT by underbyte (Arrogance will drop your IQ 50 points)
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To: SteveH
The Japanese are most assuredly not "hoarding" US dollars. Given the state of their economy, they are re-investing them here. And as far as the subject of slavery, I can make a strong argument that free-market economics are the bane of economic-systems based upon slavery. Can you make the argument that protectionism does the same?
10 posted on 08/05/2003 9:59:09 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: underbyte
There you go, an argument based on emotion.
11 posted on 08/05/2003 10:01:45 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: SteveH
Japan has virtually no natural resources and the US has plenty, with a few exceptions that can be remedied by trade.

It would seem to me that the continual comparison of countries with more or less natural resources is meaningless to determine a countries wealth. Hong Kong is a great example of a country with zero natural resources, but using free trade, has become incredibly wealthy.

The natural resource argument might have been valid when the world economic system was more primitive. But in a day when so little wealth is required for "necessities" like food, and all other wealth is used for "wants", it is the generation of a "want" in the population that is the driving factor of a good economy.

If trade barriers are such a good idea, then we should have tarriffs between US states. Trade barriers between countries are just a low grade of warfare between different people for purely tribal reasons.

We're all humans on this planet. Set us free.

12 posted on 08/05/2003 10:04:02 AM PDT by narby (Terminate Gray Davis)
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To: 1rudeboy
All I know is that since the advent of this free trade nonsense we've lost whole industries including some the high tech building blocks for computers and other instrumentation, trade deficits have skyrocketed as well as debt on the personal, corporate and fedgov level, we're the world's largest debtor nation, immigration has increased, straining our healthcare and educational systems to the hilt and foreign penetration into our domestic affairs contiues unabated. So where has been the benefit to all this idiocy other than to line the pockets of selected foreign and some US corporations?
13 posted on 08/05/2003 10:07:14 AM PDT by american spirit (ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION = NATIONAL SUICIDE)
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To: 1rudeboy
Related threads:

The Case for Unilateral Free Trade and Open Immigration
The Case for Unilateral Free Trade and Open Immigration
The Case for Unilateral Free Trade and Open Immigration (Thread Two)

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, "On the Question of Free Trade" - January 9, 1848


14 posted on 08/05/2003 10:10:49 AM PDT by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!)
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To: american spirit
Gosh, I dunno. How we became the largest economy on the face of the planet astounds me. /sarc.
15 posted on 08/05/2003 10:12:01 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: Willie Green
And please, refrain from making the illogical and utterly laughable argument that "Karl Marx 'approved' of free trade, therefore Milton Friedman is a Marxist." Even Pat Buchanan doesn't.

16 posted on 08/05/2003 10:13:55 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: american spirit
All I know is that since the advent of this free trade nonsense we've lost whole industries including some the high tech building blocks for computers and other instrumentation, trade deficits have skyrocketed as well as debt on the personal, corporate and fedgov level, we're the world's largest debtor nation, immigration has increased, straining our healthcare and educational systems to the hilt and foreign penetration into our domestic affairs contiues unabated. So where has been the benefit to all this idiocy other than to line the pockets of selected foreign and some US corporations?

But are we economically less well off?

By all accounts, we live in larger houses, have better and more feature filled cars. Have more TVs with more channels. Healthcare is the best it's ever been in the history of humanity, and every human is required to be treated under the law of the land, whether they have insurance or not.

We go on vacations to farther places. There are hundreds of cruise ships catering to the middle class, where only the ultra-rich used to travel by sea, and then only for the utilitarian purpuse of going somewhere. Now cruises are indulgences only.

So where are the small children with bloated bellies?

I simply just don't buy the woe-is-me line. I will always have a decent life. Even if I have to work at McDonalds and live in a small trailer. I've seen the shack my mother grew up in, and no one in this country is that bad off today, except for the lazy or mentally incompetent.

17 posted on 08/05/2003 10:17:50 AM PDT by narby (Terminate Gray Davis)
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To: 1rudeboy
umm sparky we were the largest force well **BEFORE** free trade so do you have a point?
18 posted on 08/05/2003 10:18:29 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: narby
By all accounts, we live in larger houses, have better and more feature filled cars. Have more TVs with more channels. Healthcare is the best it's ever been in the history of humanity, and every human is required to be treated under the law of the land, whether they have insurance or not.

And we are all far more in debt..

19 posted on 08/05/2003 10:19:33 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: Willie Green
Hey Willie.

How come none of you trade restrictionists want to answer the question about why restrictions are good around the US border. But not good around state borders?

20 posted on 08/05/2003 10:19:43 AM PDT by narby (Terminate Gray Davis)
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