Free trade

Free trade is the untaxed flow of goods and services between countries, and is a name given to economic policies and parties supporting increases in such trade.

Notes

• {{note|Murray}} In ?Free Trade Under Attack: What America Can Do? Professor Murray Weidenbaum argued that ?Tight-knit special interests are manipulating the political system for greater protectionism, while the more diffused citizen interest suffers.? This article (from 1984) echoes the claim of earlier trade theorists (back to Adam Smith) that protectionism is largely a result of a political failure, but comes from a former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to president Reagan, who witnessed the process in 1980s government, and wrote: ?leas for protectionism reflect the ability of relatively small but influential groups to convince legislatures to adopt policies that benefit them, albeit at the expense of citizens at large. The balance of power is extremely uneven, given the limited knowledge that consumers currently have about these matters.? This call for free trade argues that the consumer interest is divided, but assumes that the public would be homogenously in favour of free trade if better educated; this is controversial and not all consumers currently support Free Trade.
• {{note|Cobden1838}} Emphasis added to Cobden's quotation of the petition, in a Free Trade speech delivered in 1846, the full text of which is available from cooperativeindividualism.org)
• {{note|Trap103}} Quotation from page 103 of James Goldsmith's THE TRAP, 1994, Macmillan ISBN 0333642244 (summarized in Art Hilgart' review). Goldsmith had a background in corporate takeovers, but breaking up conglomerates within nations would still be permissible in his model, so long as no part of the conglomerate exported outside its area of production. His concern for the harm done to rural societies by the effects of free trade is summarized on page 103 with the sentence: "The cost of such social breakdown can never be measured. The damage is too fundamental."
• {{note|economist-3502385}} See The Economist's review of fuel subsidy's effects The Economist online.
• {{note|Machlup1950}} Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, "The Patent Controversy in the 19th Century", Journal of Economic History, 10 (1) pp 1-29, 1950.