David Ricardo's (bogus) argument for free trade is repeated ad infinitum by the ownership class that Ricardo designed it for. Recall the economic history.
Classical economics was aimed at freeing the growing bourgeois class of developing capitalism from the grip of the landed class that governed under feudalism. The chief means of production in the Agricultural Age was cultivation of land and the surplus went to the owners of the land — the monarch, along with the aristocracy, and the landed gentry to whom the monarch had granted titles that could be rescinded. When that began to shift toward owners of capital with the onset of the Industrial Age, there was a conflict over power and control between the owners of land and the owners of the capital, the haute bourgeoisie. Property rights came into play legally, for instance, and international trade became much more significant as factories churned out product in excess of domestic needs and wants.
This also created a new subclass of finance and commerce involved in distribution of the capitalist production, which unlike agricultural goods where generally imperishable. Some of these like financiers and ship owners were haute bourgeoisie, but there were also many minor owners who worked but were also owners of their means of production. These were the petite bourgeoisie that aspired to becoming haute bourgeoisie if they became extremely successful.
As a result, production increased domestically, and foreign trade grew with the need to import natural resources for production and to distribute surplus production internationally. This also gave further impetus to imperialism and colonialism., as well as the rise of mercantilism, the counter to which was protectionism.
So-called free trade under Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage all but guaranteed that colonies would be frozen into providing resources and being provided with the output of capitalist production without ever developing an industrial base built on technological innovation. American leaders recognized this and adopted the
American System to protect their infant industries, instead of adopting the British system based British classical economics.
Now that the US is a developed country it is playing the part toward less developed countries that Britain played while the US was developing. Surprise! Not.
Free markets are free to the degree that barriers to entry are lowered, artificial scarcity reduced, and governments don't intervene, in order to prevent asymmetric economic power. Free trade is free to the degree that countries can compete not only economically, which may still benefit some countries more than others and some within a country more than others, but also politically with respect to national interests as a whole based on national sovereignty.
Contemporary trade agreement are largely about imposing asymmetric economic power on lucrative markets based on intellectual property rights, for example, and reducing the ability of sovereigns to take their national interests as whole into account through legally privileging transnational commercial interests by treaty.
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Noah’s (free trade) arkDavid F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame
