Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on October 23, 2017
… is from page 141 of my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold’s important 2009 book, Mad About Trade (footnote deleted):
Trade has been seen as a friend of peace for centuries. In the 19th century, British statesman Richard Cobden pursued free trade as a way not only to bring more affordable bread to English workers but also to promote peace with Britain’s neighbors. He negotiated the Cobden-Chevalier free trade agreement with France in 1860 that helped to cement an enduring alliance between two countries that had been bitter enemies for centuries. In the 20th century, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Cordell Hull, championed lower trade barriers as a way to promote peaceful commerce and reduce international tensions. Hull had witnessed first-hand the economic nationalism and retribution after World War I. He believed that “unhampered trade dovetail[s] with peace; high tariffs, trade barriers and unfair economic competition with war.”
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