All Posts Tagged With: "trade restrictions"
Pundit in Wonderland
In one of those boilerplate articles about the deteriorating American middle class, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson last September pointed out that a new Pew Research Center survey revealed that an increasing number of people think we live in a country divided into “haves” and “have-nots” and that more people now put themselves in the [...]
1Nov2007 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomic Freedom: The Path to Development
Economic development has historically been exceptional rather than typical. As Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has observed in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, capitalism has been successful mainly in the West. Consequently, there are tremendous income disparities around the world. In 2000, real income per person [...]
1Apr2005 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Unconstitutionality of Protectionism
Even the staunchest free trader might reluctantly concede that the apparatus of protectionism—tariffs, import quotas, and anti-dumping duties—is constitutional because clause 3 of Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution delegates to Congress “power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations. . . .” Before we make too hasty a concession, however, [...]
1Apr2005 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedFree Trade’s Never-Ending Battle
Arthur Foulkes is a freelance writer living in Indiana. Bastiat, did you live in vain? I can think of few people who did more for the cause of free trade in his lifetime than Frédéric Bastiat. A nineteenth-century French lawmaker, pamphleteer, economist, and philosopher, Bastiat is well known to free-trade advocates even today. His classic [...]
1Sep2004 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 5 comments | ContinuedEnding Farm Subsidies Wouldn’t Help the Third World?
Talks by the 146 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) collapsed last fall over trade-liberalization disputes between rich and poor countries. The biggest bone of contention was the extent to which the “first world”—mainly Europe, the United States, and Japan—were willing to slash their huge farm subsidies. More than 20 developing countries, including Brazil, [...]
1Apr2004 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedThere’s Still Work to Do
Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frédéric Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is “unseen.” The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and [...]
1Apr2004 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedBut what about . . . ?
My Virginia license plate, adorning both bumpers of my Japanese car, reads FRE TRDE. I always mention this to audiences so they know exactly where I stand on the question of how free consumers should be to spend their incomes on foreigners’ goods and services. I am proudly, completely, confidently, and unconditionally a free trader. [...]
1Sep2003 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedFree Trade Has Been Refuted?
Perhaps the most settled of all economic propositions is that coercive interference with peaceful exchange is detrimental. Yet we often hear groups that want to stifle trade for their own benefit claim that some statistic or argument proves that free trade is a bad policy in general and that protectionism is good for the country. [...]
1Jul2003 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedUnderdeveloping Indiana
The people of the 50 states of the United States (5 percent of the world’s population) produce 31 percent of the world’s gross product of goods and services. Think of the United States as a world in itself, composed of 50 countries with open borders and no restrictions on trade between them. In this world, [...]
1Sep2002 | Manuel F. Ayau | 3 comments | ContinuedTrade and the Rise of Freedom
Thomas DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. This is adapted from a paper presented at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s conference on “’The History of Liberty” at Auburn University, January 29, 2000. It is no exaggeration to say that trade is the keystone of modern civilization. As Murray Rothbard wrote, “The [...]
1Jun2000 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | 2 comments | ContinuedPolitics and Foreign Trade
The case for free trade is overwhelming, both theoretically and empirically. My last two columns developed the theoretical case, which is based on the concepts of opportunity costs and comparative advantage. Even if the people of a country have an absolute advantage in producing everything, they still gain from foreign trade because they cannot have [...]
1Dec1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedFist of Steel
Dale DeBoer is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Last year was bad for U.S. steel producers. Imports jumped to historic highs, and domestic prices fell. Corporate steel profits collapsed, and almost six percent of steelworkers lost their jobs. Crying foul, steel producers appealed for relief under U.S. international [...]
1Nov1999 | Dale | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy Managed Trade Is Not Free Trade
The British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay observed that free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can bestow, is in almost every country unpopular.[1] Indeed, sound economics often makes for unsuccessful politics. That free trade is a great benefactor is one of the most convincingly established truths of economic science.[2] The economic case [...]
1Aug1997 | Robert Batemarco | 18 comments | ContinuedWhy It Matters
Professor Clites teaches at Tusculum College in Tennessee. Last November people in Quebec voted on whether to secede from Canada. Before the vote took place there was speculation in both Canada and the United States about how much harm such a pullout would do to Canada, to the United States, and to Quebec itself. With [...]
1Mar1996 | Roger M. Clites | 0 comments | Continued-
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