… is from page vi of Max Rangeley’s and Daniel Hannan’s Preface to the new, superb collection of original essays on trade and protectionism that they edited – a collection titled Free Trade in the Twenty-First Century (2025):
Free trade benefits the vast majority of people, but its biggest beneficiaries are those on low incomes, the highest portion of whose budgets generally go on the most protected goods, above all food. Conversely, its biggest losers are those politically connected lobbies that have distorted the rules in their favour.
DBx: Yes.
But I’d say even more. First, free international trade no more has “losers” than does free domestic trade. Free international trade – that is, the freedom of people to spend and invest their incomes (and only their incomes) as they choose regardless of political jurisdictions – is, in market economies, one of countless sources of economic change, each one of which changes the demands for the services and outputs of different producers. There is nothing special about free international trade in ‘destroying’ particular firms, industries, and jobs. Free international trade – like all economic activity in free markets – denies to no one anything to which anyone is legally entitled. Free international trade – like everything in life – has costs, but to pay a cost is not to incur a loss.
Second, over time, free trade enriches everyone, even those persons who are today paying the costs entailed in enjoying the enormous benefit of living in a society that has free trade.
