What Is Free Trade?: An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader — John Shaqi
What Is Free Trade?: An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American ReaderBastiat, Frédéric
General
What Is Free Trade?: An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader
Bastiat, Frédéric
Free trade; Tariff -- United States
"Formerly we exported goods; this exportation gave way to that of
thread for the manufacture of goods; later, instead of thread, we
exported machinery for the making of thread; then capital for the
construction of machinery; and lastly, workmen and talent, which are
the source of capital. All these elements of labor have, one after the
other, transferred themselves to other points, where their profits
were increased, and where the means of subsistence being less
difficult to obtain, life is maintained at less cost. There are at
present to be seen in Prussia, Austria, Saxony, Switzerland, and
Italy, immense manufacturing establishments, founded entirely by
English capital, worked by English labor, and directed by English
talent."
We may here perceive that Nature, with more wisdom and foresight than
the narrow and rigid system of the protectionists can suppose, does
not permit the concentration of labor, and the monopoly of advantages,
from which they draw their arguments as from an absolute and
irremediable fact. It has, by means as simple as they are infallible,
provided for dispersion, diffusion, mutual dependence, and
simultaneous progress; all of which, your restrictive laws paralyze as
much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of
nations. By this means they render much more decided the differences
existing in the conditions of production; they check the
self-levelling power of industry, prevent fusion of interests,
neutralize the counterpoise, and fence in each nation within its own
peculiar advantages and disadvantages.
3. _Even were the labor of one country crushed by the competition of
more favored climates (which is denied), protective duties cannot
equalize the facilities of production._ To say that by a protective
law the conditions of production are equalized, is to disguise an
error under false terms. It is not true that an import duty equalizes
the conditions of production. These remain after the imposition of the
duty just as they were before. The most that law can do is to equalize
the _conditions of sale_. If it should be said that I am playing upon
words, I retort the accusation upon my adversaries. It is for them to
prove that _production_ and _sale_ are synonymous terms, which if they
cannot do, I have a right to accuse them, if not of playing upon
words, at least of confounding them.
Let me be permitted to exemplify my idea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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