> there are good arguments that free trade is not always a good thing
Arguments are one thing, results are another. Free markets always result in more prosperity, from top to bottom. Free trade is just one aspect of a free market.
Arguments are one thing, results are another. Free markets always result in more prosperity, from top to bottom. Free trade is just one aspect of a free market.
This is wildly misleading. Free trade in the 21st century generally refers to trade across national boundaries. Nations represent markets that are not subject to the same basic conditions as each other. Moreover, free trade (the international kind) almost always seems to involve a lack of restriction on the movement of goods, capital and profit, but rarely allows labor the same benefit.
The 21st century version of "free trade" is about expanding the scope and scale of capital markets and the movement of goods and profits across national (and thus market-jurisdictional and -conditional) boundaries. It has almost nothing to with the "old" notion of free trade within a given market.
> It has almost nothing to with the "old" notion of free trade within a given market.
The Law of Supply and Demand has never changed, and never will.
"The Law of Supply and Demand" was unknown to the Romans or various middle Eastern empires (just two examples), whose economies worked in entirely different ways from those that followed the mercantilist period in Europe, and became canonized by Smith et al.
So was the law of gravity, but gravity still ruled their lives.
> whose economies worked in entirely different ways
The Law of Supply and Demand applies to all economic systems.
I expected a better response from you.
> The Law of Supply and Demand applies to all economic systems.
False. Well, false for some well known versions of whatever "the law of supply and demand" is.
There are all kinds of reasons why the retail cost of goods are not an inverse linear function of their supply; ditto for the retail cost of labor.
Why do you feel this need to reduce complex systems to vapid platitudes?
More prosperity but often at a cost to local environments and commons that are not priced into the market. And prosperity itself, measured purely in terms of economic gains, is not always a good thing either.
I don't know anyone who prefers to be less prosperous.
“Free trade” here refers to inter-country globalized trade across borders, not free markets within a confine.
There’s a much stronger case to be made that industrial policy has resulted in prosperity for Asia, ironically the opposite of free trade :)