Here’s a letter to a new correspondent.
Mr. L__:
You find my recent letter in the Washington Post to be, as you call it, “a perfect specimen of neoliberal apologetics.” (Having never before done anything perfectly, I’m rather proud of myself on this score!) You go on: “What the president sees which market fundamentalists do not is free trade is impossible when other countries impose tariffs on us.”
With respect, you’re mistaken. Economists since the time of Adam Smith have used the term “free trade” (or any of its variations) to describe freedom of the citizens of the home country to trade freely regardless of the policies pursued by foreign governments.
While economists recognize that the people of the home country would economically benefit even more from free trade at home if trade restrictions imposed by foreign governments were also eliminated, economists also recognize that the people of the home country nevertheless economically benefit from free trade at home even when other governments are highly protectionist.
Put differently, when a government removes barriers to its citizens’ freedom to trade, those citizens reap economic benefits from trading with foreigners regardless of the protectionist burdens suffered by those foreigners as a result of their own governments’ economic folly.
Put even more differently, a policy of free trade at home in a world filled with protectionism is no more impossible or undesirable than is a policy of freedom of speech at home in a world filled with censorship, or a policy of freedom of religion at home in a world pervaded with religious intolerance and state-sponsored churches.
Surely we Americans, of all people, do not have to depend upon non-Americans to embrace freedom for themselves as a condition for us to embrace freedom for ourselves.
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
