8/8/2019 debating free trade-2

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It's hard to believe we're still debating free tradegists like Alfred Kinsey.

Here in Canadawe have al-ways had anti-free-traders,and I siill get the odd scarymailing from the Council ofCanadians about how underNAFTA the Americans are

going to suck the Great takesdry and biow the dust in ourfaces, or some such nefariousplot.

But I thought after rgBB,with the clearly enormousbenefits of free trade, suchviews had retreated to themargins. Hoo hah! Instead, as

Bill \,Vatson pointed out inWednesday's Citizen,the lat-est "conservative" federalbudget includes Sr75 millionlor new Coast Guard vesselsthat wili protect shipyards

notonly against foreign butagainst interprovincial com-petition.

After the catasfrophic beg-gar-thy-neighbour trade pol i -

cies of the r93os, aimosteveryone became a free trad-er in theory. But almost noone did in practice, partiy be-cause they didn't actuallyun-derstand the theory. politi-cians and citizens alike gener-ally remain convincel thatexports are good and imports

are bad, and free trade meansgetting foreigners to buy ourexports by agreeing to enduretheir imports. But this analy-sis is backwards, and makesthose who succumb to it vul-nerable to bqruts of panickyprctectionism at bad mo-Inents.

In truth the only reason weexport is to pay for imports.

When we export, we putlabour and material intothings then give them to for-eigners in return for bits ofcoloured paper with deadpoliticians on them. Whenwe import, by contrast, we

give bits of coloured paperwith deadpoliticians on themto foreigners in return foruseful things they producedwith effort and expense. lfwecould import indefinitelywithout having to pay for itwe would. Regrettably wecan't. But in an economicemergency we might try tem-porarily t0 stop sending use-ful things out ofthe counrrywhiLe continuing to bringthem in; we certainly shouid-

n't want to do the reverse.I won't repeat Ricardo's ar-gument here, partly becausein graduate school I onceiried to cornbat a piece ofdopey protectionism by in-voking it, and when no onehad heard of it I begaa,',Sup-pose you have two countriesand two products," and theprofessor interrupted mewith "Whoa, this is way toocomplicated." I stifled anygrade-imperilling retortabout the complexity of two

plus twq and learned insteadto cite economist Arthur Laf-fer's illustration of the foilv ofprotectionism: "Say we'in-vented a cure for polio andJapan invented a cure for can-cer. True to form, they pre-vented us from selling ourcure in their country. Shouldwe get even? Should we stopthem from selling their cur-e

for cancer here?"In case Democrats in Con-

gress think the answer is yes,let me try to catch them intheir own failacy by askingsimply: Why shouid ioreign-ers buy American goods ifAmericans won't buy theirs?Oh, you hadn't thought ofthat. Hadn t thought, period.

That the United Statesmight be about to trigger acatastrophic bout of protec-tionism is certainly alarmingenough for one day. But thatit is happening in zoog leadsme to clip this passage from|ohn Stuart Mill's On Liberv... and burn it: "as mankiniimprove, the number of doc-trines which are no longer

disputed or doubted wilibeconstantly on the increase:and the well-being ofmankind may almost be mea-sured by the number andgravity of the truths whichhave reached the point ofbe-ing uncontested." Asmankind improve? We ap-pear to need a far bleakerconception of history, onethat not only incorporates pJ.

O'Rourke's maxim that',imo,rance is a renewable"re-source" but admits that larsenumbers of superficially i-n-teiligent and weli-meaningpeopie seem strangely bus|actively renewing it.

If you don't agree, tell me,please, how we can even bediscussing protectionism inthe Year ofGood Griefzoog.

John Robson's column appearsweekly.

J0r{N R08S0N

I gcr,."'is it possible rhat inffi the Year of Our Lordl- Izoog we should findourselves debating protec-iionism? It is a centralprernise of our civilizationthat free inquiry and open de-bate will over time improveour understanding. But ap-parently the product may notbe exactly as shor,l.n in the ad-vertisement,

When the U.S. Congressthreatens to apply sweeping"Buy American" require-ments to its stimulus prikrgewe are driven to stop debat-ing the dubious merits ofstimulus packages and starttryingto explain free trade in-stead. From the beginaing. Asthough neither logic nor ex-perience had previously beeninvoked on the subject or,worse, had been invoked invain.

Back in r8r7 David Ricardooffered an elegant and com-peiling proof that free tradebenefits both parties. Ir is al-most the only thing the soeialscrences have ever provenwith mathematical rigour andyet it is disputed, or ridicuied,by persons tvha accept withcomic credulity the pseudo-scientific findings of sociolo-

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