Free Trade & Trade Policy

What President Clinton Should Have Said to the Japanese, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government arrested American citizens of Japanese descent, placed them in American concentration camps, and confiscated their assets. There were no indictments. There were no trials. There were no convictions. These Americans were simply rounded up, taken away, ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 4

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 "The Protectionist creed rises like a weed in every soil," lamented the English classical economist Walter Bagehot in the 1880s. "Every nation wishes prosperity for some conspicuous industry. At what cost to the consumer, by what hardship to less conspicuous industries, that ...

What President Clinton Should Have Said to the Japanese, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to visit Japan and to speak to you, the Japanese people, during my first year as president of the United States. I am here not only to fortify friendships between our nations, but also to announce major changes regarding relations between the U.S. ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 3

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 "Protectionism is purely and highly socialistic," American economist Francis Walker observed in 1887. "Its purpose is so to operate upon individual choices and aims, so to influence private enterprise and the investments of capital, as to secure the building up, within the ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In 1836, the English classical liberal Henry Fairbairn looked into the future and this is what he saw: "Seeing then, that in the natural order of things the triumph of Free Trade principles is now inevitable, magnificent indeed are the prospects that ...

Misreading the Industrial Revolution

by Lawrence W. Reed September 1, 1993

Those of us who are advocates of the spontaneous order of an unfettered market are forever stomping out the fires of fallacious reasoning and anticapitalistic bias. It seems that as we set one record straight, opponents of the market manage to pervert ten others. We spend as much time explaining ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 "The principle of free trade is non-interference," wrote the English classical economist Nassau Senior in 1828. "It is to suffer every man to employ his industry in the manner which he thinks most advantageous, without a pretense on the part of the ...

The Failure of Socialism and Lessons for America, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 In the early 1920s, Ludwig von Mises pointed out that "socialism is the watchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter, 'The Epoch of Socialism."' Since ...

The Failure of Socialism and Lessons for America, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 The world is watching the spectacle of Russia and the other captive nations of the former Soviet Union trying to free themselves from their seventy-five-year experiment in socialism. The bankruptcy of the system is accepted by practically everyone. The economies of the former Soviet republics are in shambles. Civil wars and ethnic violence have ...

Speculation, Law, and the Market Process

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1993

After Hurricane Andrew devastated the southern part of Florida, the state's attorney general threatened to prosecute "price-gougers" and speculators for charging exorbitant prices for food, ice, plywood, and other essential items. The Power of government officials to regulate prices and to punish speculators is not new. It stretches back centuries. ...

The Slaughterhouse Cases

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1993

1869, the Louisiana legislature enacted a statute granting seventeen people the exclusive right to operate the only slaughterhouse in Orleans. All other slaughterhouses were required to close down. Any butcher who desired to continue his trade would be permitted to do so in the new slaughterhouse and would be ...

Historical Capitalism vs. The Free Market

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1993

During the dark days of Nazi collectivism in Europe, the German economist Wilhelm Röpke used the haven of neutral Switzerland for continuing to write and lecture on the moral and economic principles of the free society. "Collectivism," he warned, was "the fundamental and moral danger of the West." The triumph ...