Revised Platform

Health and safety? Is that lettuce washed in dioxin? Too easy, how about an even vaguer local problem. The avacado crops in my county are not inspected for a particular infestation because the vector is no present here as it is in Mexico and Chile. Were either of those two countries to be granted free and equal access with their fruits the insects would gain a foothold and the local crop would likely be damaged to the point of destroying the industry. I imagine the Japanese have similar feelings about US beef. Personally I canot wait to set up a reimportation business for big pharma products and no worries about that silly FDA stuff either under your scenario. And labor? Isn't that commerce? Who gets to pay for doubling the number of northbound border crossings at the US Mexico border. I'd even be willing to bet that Mexico would help with the free flow of labor by providing free bus rides from their southern border to ours. Raw capitalism creates externalities, what you call inhibitions are often just attempts to internalize those costs.

Brodreaux: I steadfastly and unconditionally oppose any efforts to treat commerce transacted across political boundaries as different from commerce transacted within political boundaries.

Noble and liberal sentiment. But contextual, unless you mean the American border.

The context depends upon the economic development of the political boundary in question. Certain developing states have not only perfectly the right to protect nascent industries but the justification for it. Due to economies of scale, these developing countries must (and therefore should) protect certain industries against imports from countries where production levels allow prices at which local industries could not possibly compete.

What was the Common Market (now the EU) if not a tariff barrier to protect the reconstruction of European industry? And, it functioned admirably well at this task. Till recently.

Protecting new industries until they are able to fend for themselves is a good idea. Unfortunately, the industries in question get used to import tariff protection far beyond the moment that those very protections should be dropped. Europe grew too old and fat over the forty years of "reconstruction" and when the GATT opened the gates in the mid-nineties, a tsunami of goods made from relatively unskilled labor (requiring little design, little technology and mostly assembly) flooded European markets to the point of pushing out companies that employed low-skilled labor. There is nary a kitchen appliance that is made in Old Europe and damn few in the New Europe.

The same is probably true of the US.

Tariffs barriers are not necessarily ugly in ALL circumstances, but their abuse inevitably makes them ugly in most circumstances.

Having made the above argument, I must admit that European/American subsidies of agricultural products are known to have created a dependency on these imports by African countries. Not even the local farmers can compete with import prices.

Which is why Europe is witnessing daily boatloads of young and desperate Africans defying death to make it onto its shores. That is the great tragedy of subsidizing agriculture, whether American or European.