Free Trade Quotes

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“But suppose, for the sake of argument, free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would develop capitalism trade more rapidly. Is it not a fact that the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly?”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism: a popular outline

“Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. The one strikes the eye at a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation.”
― Frederic Bastiat

“It is the consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“Bigotry does not consort easily with free trade.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City

“If it's okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn't we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don't think that's a good idea, and not just because it might backfire. We don't think it's a good idea because we believe human beings have human rights, whatever their colour and wherever they live. Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born.”
― Steven E. Landsburg

“The government enforces a monopoly over the production and distribution of its alleged 'services' and brings violence to bear against would-be competitors. In so doing, it reveals the fraud at the heart of its impudent claims and gives sufficient proof that it is not a genuine protector, but a mere protection racket.”
― Robert Higgs

“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”
― Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade

“Let's compete freely. Goddam tariffs! Free trade and free seas—that's what's right!”
― James Clavell, Tai-Pan

“If you have free trade and free circulation of
capital and people but destroy the social state and all forms of progressive taxation, the temptations of defensive nationalism and identity politics will very likely grow stronger than ever in both Europe and the United States. Note, finally, that the less developed countries will be among the primary beneficiaries of a more just and transparent international tax system.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century

“There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.”
― Ayn Rand

“President Trump displays less finesse than a bull in a china shop. Just as Prime Minister May managed - after many months of bitter wrangling - to reach a degree of consensus on what Britain's future relationship with the EU should look like, in comes the marauding beast upending all the finely balanced Wedgwood. Britain may well need some form of future trade deal with the US but it certainly isn't one that should be struck with the co-author of a lame business book more appropriately named 'Art of the Steal'.”
― Alex Morritt, Lines & Lenses

“The upper middle class and the economic right, who had favored the coup, were euphoric. At first they were a little shocked when they saw the consequences of their action; they had never lived in a dictatorship and did not know what it was like. They thought the loss of democratic freedoms would be temporary and that it was possible to go without individual or collective rights for a while so long as the regime respected the tenets of free enterprise.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“The old imperialism had the ‘advantage’ that the leading metropolitan power of the time, Britain, could keep its economy open to the goods of the then newly-industrializing countries, without getting indebted (on the contrary it became the largest capital exporter in the years before the First World War). For at least four decades up to 1928, India had the second largest export surplus in the world (second only to the USA); and this despite the imports of goods that caused domestic de-industrialization. But this export surplus was entirely appropriated by Britain not only to pay for its current account deficit with continental Europe, North America and regions of recent European settlement, but also to allow it to export capital to these regions.”
― Prabhat Patnaik, The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time

“Protectionism does not produce wealth, and free trade and economic openness are ultimately in everyone’s interest”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century

“Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners.”
― Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

“International trade in chemical products is not free. . . . Joint control of the market became the general rule; free competition, the exception.”
― George W. Stocking, Cartels in Action: Case Studies in International Business Diplomacy

“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes, and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within two hundred years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.”
― Ulysses S. Grant

“Dr. Wickramsinghe, I don't mean to insult, but what do we have in Sri Lanka? We have a small island nation the size of what, Belgium, that has been at war with itself since 1983. A sixteen-year civil war which shows no signs of abating. A tiny poor nation. What do you possibly have to offer anyone besides warmed-over wage slaves and more of the same?"
..."Listen, we support development. But there are some serious problems with the Sri Lankan way of life. I can assure you that there will be no entry into the WTO for Sri Lanka, nor any free trade agreements with the U.S., unless you enact some serious reforms. Tighten your fucking belt. I believe we have made it very clear that your grossly overfunded health and education will have to go.”
― Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

“Page 199: According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Statistics, more than 20 percent of all imports to the United States come from foreign subsidiaries or affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. … This is why American business is so adamantly opposed to tariffs—not fear of foreign retaliation, but fear of tariffs on products from American-owned industrial plantations.”
― Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution

“Page 200: This school of thought might be called “free trade plus.” The United States will benefit from global free trade, these liberals argue, as long as the skills and productivity of American workers are upgraded. Higher skills translate into higher productivity, which will in turn translate into higher wages. Here a good theory falls victim to an evil fact: productivity has been going up in America, without resulting wage gains for American workers. The average productivity of American workers increased by more than 30 percent between 1977 and 1992, while the average real wage fell by 13 percent.”
― Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution

“Page 204: In an 1848 address, he (Karl Marx) observed:
"Generally speaking, the Protective system in these days is conservative, while the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a work, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade."
… the neo-fascist right is more likely than the cosmopolitan left to benefit from erosion of living standards by free-market globalism. Laissez-faire globalism may breed its own nemesis, in the form of the most radical and destructive kinds of ethnic nationalism and economic statism.”
― Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution

“So the two champions of free trade, Britain and the US, were not only not free trade economies, but have been the two most protectionist economies among rich countries, i.e. until they each in succession became the world's dominant industrial power.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Quoting page 99-101:

The opening of unregulated foreign trade causes a general shift of production and jobs to the low-wage nations. They experience a rapid rise in production of advanced goods and in the availability of skill-developing and high-paid jobs, rapidly build new factories, and experience a rapid upgrading in their jobs, economic capabilities, and income.

The other side of these benefits to the low-income nations is the corresponding damage to the high-income nations, that are losing the industries and jobs that these nations are gaining. The high-income nations experience an excess of imports over exports, a decline in production of advanced goods and in the availability of skill-developing and high-paid jobs, suffer a decline and obsolescence in their industrial plant, and a downgrading in their available jobs, economic capabilities, and income.

This pattern of trade is anomalous not only because it calls on the high-income nations to acquiesce in their own economic decline, but because it points toward a world-wide failure or collapse. The low-income nations are betting their futures on continued increases in sales of advanced goods in the markets of the high-income nations--but these markets are being undermined by the economic decline of the high-income nations. If the low-income nations have a very large population, and especially if any of the nations in the unregulated-trade group have rapid rates of population-growth, the end result of the process will be that there will be no high-income nations anywhere and no substantial market for advanced goods. In the end, all nations are dragged down. The rise in the low-income nations cannot be extrapolated into the future, for it destroys the conditions by which it is temporarily supported. ...

The final effects on the standard of living of the high-income nation of unregulated foreign trade are similar to the effects of its permitting unlimited immigration. The shifting of the jobs to the low-wage nation has the same effects as the shifting of excessive numbers of workers to the high-wage nation.”
― John M. Culbertson, The Trade Threat and the U.S. Trade Policy

“Page 61-2

... Rome expanded rapidly ... and became master over the entire Mediterranean Basin. It then had unlimited resources in terms of land, money, and slaves. It collected taxes or tribute throughout its empire and was able to transfer to the central capital massive quantities of foodstuffs and manufactured items. The peasants and the artisans of Italy saw their economic base disappear as this Mediterranean economy was "globalized" by the political domination of Rome. The society was polarized between, on the one hand, a mass of economically useless plebeians and, on the other, a predatory plutocracy. A minority gorged with wealth oversaw the remaining proletarianized population. The middle-classes collapsed, a process that brought about the end of the republic and the beginning of the political form known as "empire" in conformity with the observations made by Aristotle about the importance of intermediate social classes for the stability of political systems.

Since one could not eliminate the plebeians, intractable but geographically central as they were, they came to be nourished and distracted at the empire's expense with "bread and circuses."

Page 64-5:

The positive American trade balance, when only "advanced technology" is counted, dropped from 35 billion dollars in 1990 to 5 billion in 2001 and had disappeared entirely to become one more element in the overall trade deficit in January 2002.

This fall in economic strength is not compensated for by the activities of American-based multinationals. Since 1998 the profits that they bring back into the country amount to less than what foreign companies that have set up shop in the United States are taking back to their own countries.

Page 68:
In conformity with classical economic theory, the general opening up of commercial exchange has brought about an increase in inequality throughout the world. This general exchange tends to introduce into each country the same disparities in revenue that exist at the level of the whole planet. ... The compression of worker revenues caused by free trade revives the traditional dilemma of capitalism that has now spread across the globe: low salaries do not allow for the absorption of increases in production.
Page 17: In developed countries a new class is emerging that comprises roughly 20 percent of the population in terms of sheer numbers but controls about half of each nation's wealth. This new class has more and more trouble putting up with the constraint of universal suffrage.”
― Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order

“The laws of political economy cannot be bent to suit the differences of latitude and longitude.”
― M.M. Trumbull, A history of the free trade struggle in England

“[The right-wing populist] narrative centres around division: dividing the world into the virtuous and non-virtuous. Convincing an electoral majority that they are among the virtuous, and that the non-virtuous - that is, free trade, China, migrants and refugees, and those who would impose meaningful action on climate change - need to be dealt with via tough policies. This right-wing populism turbocharges identity and grievance politics and weaponises it through the amplifying support of both social media and elements of the traditional mainstream media. (p.20-21)”
― Chris Bowen, On Charlatans

“Like stem-cell research, another potentially transformative force for good, free trade is held in check largely by the stupid, the ignorant, and the superstitious.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

“Vandana Shiva: We know what free trade means. The first free trade agreement written was by the East India Company. It means asymmetric trade. It means extraction. It means transfer of wealth.
[As quoted by DW Gibson.]”
― DW Gibson, One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests