Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 86-87 of the 1989 the Regnery Gateway edition of the 1979 collection – Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow – of Ludwig von Mises’s Fall 1958 lectures in Buenos Aires [original emphasis]:

The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation. You may be astonished that I have not mentioned a measure which is considered a prime method to industrialize a country. I mean protectionism. But tariffs and foreign exchange controls are exactly the means to prevent the importation of capital and industrialization into the country. The only way to increase industrialization is to have more capital. Protectionism can only divert investments from one branch of business to another branch.

Protectionism, in itself, does not add anything to the capital of a country. To start a new factory one needs capital. To improve an already existing factory one needs capital, and not a tariff.