Tim Worstall very nicely champions unilateral free trade in this essay in today’s TimesOnLine:
Here’s an excerpt:
Because it is imports that we desire — exports being simply the
tiresome labour that we must ship abroad to pay for them — negotiating
with other countries about their tariffs and quotas is ludicrous. Why
should we care if the foreign governments make their own citizens
poorer by denying them the products of the globe? We should concentrate
on what makes us richer, the abolition of all those barriers to our own
wealth that we impose upon ourselves.
Joan Robinson, the Cambridge economist, once pointed out that
trade negotiations are conducted on the basis that we’ll stop throwing
rocks in our harbours when you stop throwing rocks in yours: this is
not rational.
Indeed. Politcs itself is not rational.
