“Fair trade” is an entirely different matter, as there are many different concepts of fairness. I would say fair trade means, above all, genuine reciprocity: when the U.S. opens its markets to foreign nations, they extend us the same privilege, for real and not just on paper—which is not what tends to happen now.  Fair trade would thus mean an end to the mercantilism of foreign nations like China, where they game the system to run up huge trade surpluses against us.  People further left than me, like Ralph Nader, would probably say fair trade has to involve not allowing trade to increase income inequality in this country, which is a legitimate concern because “free” trade has been doing that in recent decades.

Fletcher: For a start, economic history simply does not support the proposition that free trade is best.  The U.S. was an avowedly protectionist country for most of its history, during which time it turned from a Third World backwater to the greatest industrial power in history.  The same pattern, rising to economic greatness under protectionism, has also been true for nations like Britain, Germany, Japan, Korea, and now China. So the hard data is against the free traders.  And when you look into the economics underlying this fact, you discover pretty quickly that free trade can only really be best if the absolutely pure 100% free-market model of a successful economy is true.  And that’s not something that anybody—Left, Right, or center—has practiced in domestic economics for decades now, whatever rhetoric they may employ.  There’s a good reason for that: market purism doesn’t work. We don’t have a pure 19^th-century laissez faire robber baron economy domestically, so why should we have one internationally?  We’ve learned the hard way, most recently in the financial crisis, that too little regulation can do as much damage as too much. 

We need to extend that lesson to international trade. The economic theories, like David Ricardo’s famous Theory of Comparative Advantage, that supposedly prove free trade is best, are riddled with loopholes, which are actually quite well-documented.  They assume you don’t have chronic trade deficits.  They assume prices perfectly reflect value, that you have no so-called externalities. They assume no unemployment.  They assume no short-term thinking, no debt binges, no bubbles.  They assume no international capital mobility. They assume free trade doesn’t help your foreign rivals take your industries away from you. They assume that short-term economic efficiency is the origin of long-term economic growth—which it isn’t.

Fletcher: Libertarianism is not a school of economics.  It is a philosophical position that says maximizing freedom is always the right thing to do, in economics and every other policy arena.  Libertarians are entitled to believe any philosophy they like, but political ideology and economics are simply not the same thing. Trade deficits are important because there is no free lunch in this world.  When we import more than we export, we are consuming more than we are producing, and the difference has to come from somewhere.  It comes from selling off our accumulated national wealth and from sinking deeper into debt.  Americans are worse off because we own less and owe more. Libertarians are indifferent to this because they say, “Hey, we freely chose to live irresponsibly. So it must be OK.”  But freely choosing to stick your head in the oven doesn’t mean it won’t kill you.

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What about NAFTA? How are those new free trade agreements with South Korea and several Latin American countries going to play out for the United States? China and its currency manipulation schemes are wrecking havoc on our trade deficit; is there any way to seriously address this?

Stay tuned for part two.