One of those fallacies, discussed in the article, is the dishonest claim that speculator profits translate into economic growth in other areas.
Other fallacies include:
1. The claim that due to "relative advantage," free trade enriches all countries. The relative advantage argument assumes that capital remains in each country, when in a modern globalized economy it does not. Rather than relative advantage, wind up with a net flow of investment capital from a country with expensive labor to one with cheap labor.
2. Free Traders claim that tariffs invariably make goods and services more expensive. Their arguments are correct in the (very) short term, but then they go on to claim that those prices are permanent because apparently they've never heard (or don't want you to hear about) liquidity and elasticity in supply and demand. If import shortages raise prices due to increased demand, domestic production will increase to raise that demand and bring prices back to an equilibrium. Free traders assume that the increased demand can never be met domestically.
3. Free Traders claim that tariffs cause economic depressions and impoverish nations. That would be news to Americans during most of the 19th and early 20th century, when tariffs were high by today's standards and economic growth was unprecedented.
4. Free traders like to pretend that the whole world except for Trump and his supporters reject tariffs. The fact is the most other nations have protectionist policies, if not through tariffs, then through various regulations that favor domestic production.
Great post except they are Free Traitors™ and not Free Traders.
The entirety of “Wealth of Nations” is fiction based upon a world that has never existed. An imagined world.
Adam Smith pretends to analyze something that no man in history has ever witnessed...Free Trade.
There is, and has never been, any such thing as Free Trade.
Trade between nations is always Mercantilist. And always will be.
It’s the nature of man.
5. That free trade is good for everyone involved.
6. That free trade is fair trade.
The business of America is business
Always has been, always will be.
American business is on an international scale. That is, American business is global. American salesmen travel to the very corners of the earth hawking their goods.
Isolationists that whine “Globlism, Globalism...... I see it under the bed there. It’s gonna get me!” need a night light