The inestimable Bart Hinkle over at the Richmond Times-Dispatch opines on the virtues of free trade in the face of its critics — from the right:
If free trade is bad, then the ideal situation is no trade at all — with each person growing his own food, making his own clothes, and so on. That would lead to full employment. But it would make everyone vastly worse off. Why? Milton Friedman explained why in a single sentence: “The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”
There are some other goodies about shipping “our jobs” overseas (hint: they don’t belong to you, they belong to the businesses who create them) and the idea that full protectionism might indeed offer full employment… if making your own shoes, clothes, and growing your own food appeals to you.
Good read.
What is perhaps more alarming to me in the meta-narrative is that thinkers such as Friedman — long lionized by the conservative right — are now positively demonized by the populist right, at least by virtue of their ideas as opposed to being torn down by name. Of course, ask the average Trump supporter who Friedman was… and one knows how this conversation ends.
