Each of us supports fewer restrictions on our ability to advance our own welfare. This means we want free trade when it comes to selling our own output, deciding how to produce that output, and for those who would sell their output to us, because such changes benefit us through higher sales prices and lower costs. However, it also leads almost everyone to upport restrictions on their competitors, because that also benefits them. The difference is that both parties involved gain from freer trade, but the beneficiaries of restrictions gain at an even greater cost to others, who are forced to make do with inferior alternatives as a result. A Commitment to Principle We talk of commitment to free trade, but resort to restrictions in practice because our commitment to narrow self-interest exceeds our commitment to principle.
Free trade creates wealth.
We should favor opening others' markets, because that would benefit both their consumers and more efficient American producers, by breaking the political strangle-hold of their protected domestic producers. But free trade is beneficial for Americans just as it is for others, and helping uncompetitive American companies cheat American citizens by restricting their access to foreign products they prefer convicts us of the same crime we indict others for. It is only by conforming our ideas to the truth, and by defending that truth wherever it is challenged, that free trade and liberty in general stand even a small chance of being reinvigorated. At the time of the original publication, Dr. Galles was Associate Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California. Reprinted with permission from The Freeman, a publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., January 1994, Vol. 44, No. 1.