… is from page 66 of Véron de Forbonnais’s essay “Competition” (“Concurrence“) as it appears in Encyclopedic Liberty: Political Articles in the Dictionary of Diderot and D’Alembert, a 2016 collection edited by Henry C. Clark, and translated by Henry C. Clark and Christine Dunn Henderson [original emphasis]:
This is the principal basis of the freedom of trade: it alone contributes more than any other means to bringing to a nation that external competition which enriches and makes it powerful.
DBx: Yes. And so resorting to the national-security exception too quickly or carelessly runs the risk of undermining national security: Firms protected from the best competitors will over time become less efficient, less innovative, and less nimble.
