Here’s a letter to Nolan McKinney, a long-time protectionist correspondent.
Mr. McKinney:
Thanks for alerting me to Oren Cass’s recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show. I’ve yet to read the entire transcript – which I’ll soon do – but only a few minutes of skimming it reveals several claims by Cass that are real howlers, such as this fusillade of fallacies:
So [Alfred] Marshall writes probably the first economics textbook comes out in 1890. And he says essentially nothing positive about free trade. He actually has a whole section, the comparative advantage is this idea that, oh, free trade works out great for both sides. And it’s attributed to a guy named David Ricardo, who’s a great early 1800s economist.
Marshall has a whole section called the Narrowness of the Ricardians, where he specifically says, look, Ricardo has this nice theory, has some good math associated with it, but it only works in very limited circumstances. It makes a lot of sense that Britain as a global empire is promoting it, but there are lots of people it doesn’t work for. The Americans don’t believe it, the Germans don’t believe it. And he even has this hilarious footnote where he says a lot of these ideas basically seem to be used as a way for people to put one over on the working class.
Ignore the fact that the work widely regarded as the first textbook in economics is John Stuart Mill’s 1848 Principles of Political Economy. Cass is simply wrong to imply that when Alfred Marshall wrote in his Principles of Economics of the “narrowness of Ricardo and his followers” (changed by the 8th edition to “the shortcomings of Ricardo and his followers”) that he – Marshall – was criticizing the Ricardian theory of international trade. Instead, Marshall was criticizing Ricardians for treating human nature too abstractly and mechanically – a treatment that, in that very same section, Marshall said “did little harm so long as they were treating of money and foreign trade.”
Cass is equally wrong to assert that, in his Principles, Marshall “says essentially nothing positive about free trade.” In that long book Marshall says very little about trade because, as Marshall stated on page 225 of the 8th edition, “the causes which determine the economic progress of nations belong to the study of international trade and therefore lie outside of our present view.” But “free trade” is nevertheless used nine times. By my assessment (which I invite you to check), at most only two of these mentions (the two on page 633) are negative, and then only in the context of Marshall summarizing as fairly as possible the protectionist case championed by Friedrich List. Three of the mentions are neutral (pages 565, 625, and 690), and four are positive (pages 136, 197, 621, and 627) – such as this one on page 621:
For, though England has recently been called on to struggle once more for national existence, her powers of production have been immensely increased; free trade and the growth of steam communication have enabled a largely increased population to obtain sufficient supplies of food on easy terms. The average money income of the people has more than doubled; while the price of almost all important commodities except animal food and house-room has fallen by one-half or even further.
About the “hilarious footnote” that Cass suggests conveys a skepticism of Marshall toward free trade, he, Cass, is again totally mistaken. That footnote (which is on page 630) isn’t about trade at all. Instead, it’s about how non-economists misunderstood and tendentiously misused economics to oppose Britain’s Factory Acts, legislation that had nothing whatsoever to do with trade.
Cass, in short, peddles nonsense by attempting to portray one of history’s greatest economists as a free-trade skeptic. It’s too bad that no one was on set with Cass and Carlson to inform them of this: In 1903, when Joseph Chamberlain was leading a charge in the UK for protectionism, fourteen of that country’s most prominent economists signed a powerful letter that was published in the London Times in support of free trade. (Two other economists later added their names to this letter.) Here’s a passage of this letter:
But a return to Protection would, we hold, be detrimental to the material prosperity of this country, partly for reasons of the same kind as those which, as now universally admitted, justified the adoption of Free Trade – reasons which are now stronger than formerly, in consequence of the greater proportion of food and raw materials imported from foreign countries, and the greater extent and complexity of our foreign trade. The evil would probably be a lasting one, since experience shows that Protection, when it has once taken root, is likely to extend beyond the limits at first assigned to it and is very difficult to extirpate. There are also to be apprehended those evils other than material which Protection brings in its train, the loss of purity of politics, the unfair advantage given to those who wield the powers of jobbery and corruption, unjust distribution of wealth, and the growth of ‘sinister interests.’
Among this letter’s original signers is Alfred Marshall.
It’s telling of Cass’s case for protectionism that, if only out of ignorance and not intent, he relies so heavily on utter falsehoods.
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
UPDATE: Also calling out Cass for his bonkers interpretation of Alfred Marshall is Phil Magness.
