{"id":36683,"date":"2017-04-20T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36683"},"modified":"2017-04-10T08:36:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T12:36:08","slug":"qotd-free-trade-versus-freer-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/04\/20\/qotd-free-trade-versus-freer-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Free trade versus fre<em>er<\/em> trade"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>No trade agreement is necessary for a government to adopt this ideal policy [true free trade]. And because real-world trade agreements universally fail to achieve complete free trade, real-world trade agreements are universally less than ideal. Each such agreement can and should be criticized for failing to achieve an ideal that is economically not only possible, but <em>easily<\/em> economically possible and immensely beneficial.<\/p>\n<p>But political realities being unavoidable \u2013 and fre<em>er<\/em> trade being superior to not-fre<em>er<\/em> trade \u2013 fre<em>er<\/em> trade is an acceptable real-world outcome. In my assessment (as in the assessment of many others), most so-called free-trade agreements make trade fre<em>er<\/em>. (A more-accurate name for them would be \u201cfre<em>er<\/em>-trade agreements.\u201d) And for this reason such agreements deserve the support of proponents of free markets if the only plausible option is the status quo of not-fre<em>er<\/em> trade.<\/p>\n<p>For free-market proponents to oppose fre<em>er<\/em> trade because it isn\u2019t fully free trade is akin to opposing cuts in marginal tax rates because the proposed cuts don\u2019t eliminate taxes altogether. It\u2019s akin to opposing legalization of marijuana if not <em>all<\/em> drugs are legalized. Or akin to a refusal to join with, or to support, those who oppose raising the minimum wage on the grounds that those opponents aren\u2019t actively working for a complete abolition of minimum wages.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that NAFTA, WTO agreements, TPP, and other such bilateral and multilateral fre<em>er<\/em>-trade agreements leave in place many trade barriers and specify the always-too-slow timing of tariff reductions. But these arrangements are no more instruments of \u201cmanaged trade\u201d than are government policies that prohibit the sale of some drugs, sex, and body organs \u2013 and impose taxes on the sales of all other goods, \u2013 instruments of \u201cmanaged consumption.\u201d While I argue for eliminating <em>all<\/em> of these promotions and taxes, if such elimination isn\u2019t politically feasible, then any move to reduce the number of prohibitions and the rate of taxation will make market fre<em>er<\/em> and, hence, worthy of the support of proponents of free markets.<\/p>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"http:\/\/cafehayek.com\/2016\/11\/bonus-quotation-of-the-day-176.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Bonus Quotation of the Day\u2026&#8221;, <em>Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2016-11-22.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No trade agreement is necessary for a government to adopt this ideal policy [true free trade]. And because real-world trade agreements universally fail to achieve complete free trade, real-world trade agreements are universally less than ideal. Each such agreement can and should be criticized for failing to achieve an ideal that is economically not only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[320,182,266,826],"class_list":["post-36683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-freetrade","tag-nafta","tag-protectionism","tag-tpp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9xF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36684,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36683\/revisions\/36684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}