Shattering The Myths About Free Trade

In the acclaimed novel, The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, author Russell Roberts, an economist and writer, tells a fictional story that enlightens readers to the wonders of the economic system. Russell provides an insightful, thought provoking story that illustrates protectionism and free trade, while making the concepts and arguments easy to comprehend.

The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, written by Russell Roberts, is a non-fictional story based around the topics of international trade. The novel’s title does convey what the book is about in a broad sense but is further understood on its accuracy when it is finished. Terminology included simpler words than those of economists so the concepts could be understandable by an average person. There are two main characters in the book, Ed Johnson and David Ricardo. Ed Johnson is the president of the company Star who is a television manufacturer based in the United States. David Ricardo, referred to as Dave throughout the book, is an English economists who is best known for creating the theory of comparative advantage.

In conclusion, the topic of free trade is difficult to debate and often controversial as it has advantages but also disadvantages. Nonetheless, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits as it one, contravenes basic moral ideologies, two, makes the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer, and three, jeopardizes our declining environment. All in all, free trade will neither support nor sustain our country to be ethical, prosperous or

Free trade is the act of exchanging goods or services between countries for minimal tariffs or fees. Between countries, this is a method of exchange that is gaining more and more popularity. By importing and exporting for low fees, free trade is an efficient way to cover up weaknesses in the country and gain on strengths. Free trade is a very controversial topic that is viewed upon differently by many people in many different countries. Some oppose free trade; they feel it will cause production losses or low employment in their country. Many countries also embrace it and believe it helps create a strong and healthy nation. They join in free trade organizations or draft free trade agreements with

It is well known that free trade and competition has provided benefits and has caused issues to America and to the whole world for that matter. The economy of America has produced many goods and services for the humans living there. A majority of produce, clothing, housing, and automotive vehicles wouldn’t be here without the labor of the hard-working American hands. This couldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the free trade system. The downfall to this system is that it has caused many people to go bankrupt and lose many assets including homes and even their jobs. The government responded well to these crisis’ and used labor laws and many other social programs to pull Americans out of the rut. If it wasn’t

Problem: Working class Americans experience difficulties in finding work as labor intensive jobs are moved abroad. At the same time free trade is beneficial for the global economy as a whole. Here we can see a clash in interests as the interests of those in developing countries are protected as well by the WTO and free trade tends to be beneficial for the economy as a whole. However, the problem is that 20% of the prime male working population between the ages of 25-54 are unemployed and this number is around 35% of those who don’t have a high school diploma. For marginalized groups such as African American males the teen unemployment is over 40% and that of young black men from the ages of 16-24 is over 30%.

From what my research has shown, free trade is a disadvantage to the United States because of its inability to provide more jobs here. But globally free trade is an advantage, because of tariff removals. No tariffs leads to the ability of lower prices for buyers. Producers can always find another location where jobs are cheaper, manufacturing costs are cheaper, and taxes are cheaper. So, in conclusion, for America the inability to make jobs is worse than the cost of goods being cheaper.

Russell Roberts is currently a John and Jean DeNault Research Fellow at the Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He participates in Econ Talk, a economics podcast that has contributing speakers of some of the best economists in the country. He is renowned for his literary work including his latest book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness. Roberts is a three-time teacher of the year having taught at accredited universities including the George Mason University, the University of Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University, and the University of California at Los Angeles (About).

Free trade proves far more beneficial due to these reasons. First, consider the H-O model, a move toward autarky hurts the consumer welfare and the net efficiency loss is equal to the production and consumption distortion loss. By using a PPF analysis, welfare is higher at free trade than any other situations as the country gain net efficiency. Second, if many U.S. industries are dominated by monopolistic competitive firms, a loss of free trade would increase the average price of the product and lowers variety available to consumers in U.S. Therefore, it is justified to say that Mr. Trump claims are invalid. Since free trade helps consumers more than doing harm. According to the S-S effect, wages of some individuals in U.S. may fall as U.S. is trading with a relatively labor abundant country but the cost is concentrated. The positive welfare effects of free trade in U.S. are diffused across millions of consumers, which means the total gains for all consumers are huge.

It is commonly believed that free trade between nations is a mutually beneficial arrangement for all parties involved; indeed, this is held to be an absolute truth. Though free trade is undoubtedly the most effective form of commerce between countries from a purely economic standpoint, increasingly we find that our so-called "free trade agreements" are horribly unbalanced. Indicative of these fiascoes is the North American

On January 23, 2017, Trump fulfilled his campaign promise by pulling America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a free trade agreement between the US and 11 other Pacific Rim states reached under the Obama administration. Trump stated that he did a "great thing for the American worker." (Bradner) When Trump was on the presidential campaign trail, 54% of Americans answered “much more likely” or “somewhat more likely” to the question "would you be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate for President who promises to put a stop to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and enact trade policies that put U.S. jobs first" in the Caddell & Associates poll conducted from February to March 2016. (Ballotpedia) Nevertheless, in the

In this increasingly globalized age that we live in, we as members of an industrialized society seem to gain more and more access to the rest of the world each and every day. On online social networks like “Facebook,” you can see pictures your friends that you meet in Italy while studying abroad post in real time despite the geographic time difference. You can connect to a video call with your cousins in the Far East in seconds and see how their lives are progressing and the comparisons between them. You can even debate over which comic book character is stronger with people from dozens of other countries on an online message board. People from all different walks of life from all over the world are becoming more and more interconnected

Those who oppose free trade do so because they view it in zero-sum terms instead of absolute terms. President Trump’s views on trade is similar to this zero-sum way of thinking. He claims that trade has decimated manufacturing in America, despite evidence that says that automation and productivity are the main culprits for this decline. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Douglas Irwin, points to “one representative study, by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, [that] found that pro¬ductivity growth accounted for more than 85 percent of the job loss in manufacturing between 2000 and 2010” (Irwin, 2016). The president also seems to not understand that trade lowers prices for consumers. A Mercatus Center paper

The Ricardian theory of trade states that “Trade is a positive-sum game and therefore there are no losers across or within countries” (dowling). On the contrary, Paul Krugman questions the necessity of free trade and the notion presented by this theory. Asserting that even though free trade agreements seem to provide a win-win outcome for countries, one country is guaranteed to benefit much more; establishing a winner and loser (Krugman free trade passe). These different ideologies are one of the various arguments for and against free trade – dating back to as early as the seventeenth century. Therefore, this essay seeks to analyse those arguments presented, provide the advantages and disadvantages of free trade, the history of free trade and examples from a current free trade agreement (FTA) between Australia and China (appendix 1), to prove free trade is beneficial and not passé.

”Free trade policies have created a level of competition in today's open market that engenders continual innovation and leads to better products, better-paying jobs, new markets, and increased savings and investment” (Denise Froning). Though Free trade plays a huge role in the economy today because of what and where it is used. Free trade allows for traders to trade across national boundaries and other countries without government interference. Meaning that traders have very few regulations that allow for them to do this without the government intervening. Free trade makes things for traders much easier and also allows for many more jobs in the US, such as exporting jobs, or jobs in the auto industry and plants. Though there are many