… is from Donald Broughton, quoted today at Marty Mazorra’s blog:
While we acknowledge the need to review the terms of trade with our global partners on an ongoing basis, we also know our economic history. The data underlying economic history is clear: the more unrestricted and robust global trade is, the more prosperous the global population becomes. Open markets of free trade are the greatest method to efficiently allocate resources and ensure that the best quality goods made by the most efficient producers are available to everyone. Unrestricted global trade lifts hundreds of millions, even billions, of the world’s population out of poverty. ‘Protectionism,’ like so many government regulations and programs, frequently produces results that are the exact opposite of the intended outcome.