… is paragraph 21 of Chapter 6 (“The Balance of Trade“) of the First Series of Frédéric Bastiat‘s indispensable collection entitled (in English) Economic Sophisms (original emphasis):
The truth is that we should reverse the principle of the balance of trade and calculate the national profit from foreign trade in terms of the excess of imports over exports. This excess, minus expenses, constitutes the real profit. But this theory, which is the correct one, leads directly to the principle of free trade. I present this theory to you, gentlemen, just as I do all the others that have been the subjects of the preceding chapters. Exaggerate it as much as you wish; it has nothing to fear from that test. Assume, if it amuses you, that foreigners flood our shores with all kinds of useful goods, without asking anything from us; even if our imports are infinite and our exports nothing, I defy you to prove to me that we should be the poorer for it.
DBx: No concept in international economics – indeed, perhaps no concept in all of economics – is as prodigious a source of confusion and plunderous policy as is that of the so-called “trade deficit.” As regular and careful readers of this blog know, this concept is encrusted with countless myths and half-truths. I’m convinced that humankind would be far better off had no one ever thought to carry over to modern times the absurd mercantilist notion of the “balance of trade.”
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I was very pleased this morning to learn from my friend David Hart that Liberty Fund’s edition of Bastiat’s Sophisms – complete with many essays never before published in English – will soon be available. This volume is the third in Liberty Fund’s Collected Works of Bastiat. David deserves loud and lasting applause for all that he does, which is much. But such applause would be more than justified even if (contrary to fact) all that David ever did was to shepherd, and himself contribute to, this essential Bastiat project.
