Here’s a letter to a frequent correspondent.
Mr. P__:
You write:
Imagine if you told your wife that you were going to institute a “free” trade policy in your family – that is, strangers would get the goods and services you provide to her on the same terms, and she’d be encouraged to do the same.
I don’t think your marriage would be long for this world, would you?
By that logic, if I trade with Canadians on the same terms on which I trade with Montanans, aren’t I claiming that my relationship with and obligations to Canadians are the same as my relationship with and obligations to Montanans? Aren’t I denying the fundamental nature of patriotism/nationalism? That I do have some sort of different relationship with and obligations to my fellow Americans than to random people in other countries?
I object to many of the implicit assumptions that you make in this criticism of my defense of free trade, and not least to the suggestion that I have a moral obligation to fellow Americans who are strangers to me that is equivalent to the obligation that I have to my family. I am, quite proudly, a liberal (of the old-school variety). On this matter you and I likely are separated by a fundamental disagreement over values, with you believing that each American should sacrifice his or her own economic best interest to promote what he or she supposes to be the economic interests of fellow Americans, and with me believing that neither I nor any other American is under any such ethical obligation.
But I also have an analytical disagreement: You ignore the economic interests of the large number of fellow Americans who would suffer because of tighter trade restrictions. You seem to believe the fallacy that the less we Americans trade with foreigners the wealthier each of us, at least on average, becomes. But in fact, both economic theory and evidence show overwhelmingly that the more we trade with foreigners, the wealthier we are as a people.
Trade restrictions achieve the unethical outcome that you accuse me of favoring – namely, artificially enriching a small handful of Americans at the larger expense of the great majority of Americans. In what way does, say, a few thousand steel workers in Ohio patriotically serve the interests of their fellow Americans by forcing their fellow Americans to suffer lower standards of living simply to improve the standard of living of those steel workers?
If you truly want each of us Americans to act in ways that, over time and with the greatest prospect of success, best promote the welfare of fellow Americans, you should favor free trade. The more freely the U.S. government allows Americans to trade, the wealthier Americans in general become. And not only wealthier, also freer. It is most unneighborly, and unAmerican, to deny to our fellow citizens the right to spend as they choose the incomes that they earn.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
