Trade barrier

“ If a nation cannot pay for its imports, the trusting nation will be the loser, and the importing nation the gainer. But no importing trade could continue with an inability to make payment. It would inevitably stop of itself. Does not this fact explode all the theories about the balance of trade? Does it not prove that commerce must contain some reciprocal compensating ingredients, or cease, according to its own laws, to exist. ”

“ He said, "The country is going to ruin; the balance of trade is against us. How can we continue to go on in this way many more years? Our exports last year were so many millions, and our imports so many millions more, and we are poorer by the difference between the imports and exports." ”

“ Yet as soon as goods come from a foreign country, we are asked to believe that we suffer a terrible injury in purchasing them. No one remembers that it is by means of goods exported that we purchase them. But in the country to which we export, it is the goods we send which are thought dangerous, and the goods we buy are forgotten. The whole conception of trade, which has been forced upon us by manufacturers who dreaded foreign competition, by trusts which desired to secure monopolies, and by economists poisoned by the virus of nationalism, is totally and absolutely false. ”

“ At the close of the war, however, when American ports were thrown open to the trade of Great Britain, the manufacturers of that country, with the deliberate purpose of crushing American industries out of existence, threw vast quantities of goods into the American markets, completely swamping native productions, and making it impossible for native manufacturers to compete with the importations. ”

“ Without denying that the free importation of foreign goods, coupled with the heavy duties levied by other countries upon our exported articles, has seriously diminished the profits of certain of our manufacturers, and has thereby injured the persons by them employed, those who have watched the recent course of British trade are compelled to see that other causes have been at work to account for much of the depression. ”

“ We say nothing of the prospects of foreign importation which this fact opens to our agricultural interests,—that furnishes ample subject for future consideration; what we pray the public attention to, is the warning which it gives of the effects of free trade upon the monetary concerns of the nation, and above all on the credit of the trading and commercial classes. ”

“ But do we, civilized beings, indulge in the absurd and barbarous notion that we must own the countries with which we wish to trade? Here are our official reports before us, telling us that of late years our export trade has grown enormously, not only of farm products, but of the products of our manufacturing industries ”

“ Is not the price of shirting sufficiently high without enhancing it to enrich capitalists? If money only will be received for foreign goods, must not the trade end soon enough of itself, without hastening its death by restrictions, and infallibly effect one object of the protecting-duty policy — that of compelling us to manufacture. We have not exportable money enough to pay for one year's importation, and when our money is out importations must cease, if our agricultural products will not be received in payment; and when importations cease, manufactures will be in sufficient demand. ”

“ On the other hand, there are imports so entirely of foreign origin, and so free from considerations of competition with domestic industry, that a large revenue may be raised upon them in the custom-house, without disturbing the freedom or equity of international trade. ”

“ Emphasis is laid instead on the fact that in the last analysis the trade is of goods for goods, not of money for goods, and that a tariff on imports reduces, not only imports, but exports also,—that it merely interrupts temporarily the virtual barter between nations. ”

“ Here the sacrifice is imposed on all the consumers of the "protected" commodity, that is, on the entire people, to the extent that they come in contact with the commodity in question. Export duties on raw materials, on the other hand, compel one single class of the people to make sacrifices in order to advance the favored industry. [A3-8-2] Export premiums for commodities on which labor has been expended are distinguished from import duties as the offensive from the defensive: the former promote the artificial trade, the trade which has gone beyond its natural basis, the latter curtail it. ”

“ Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers; ”

“ Heavy products are carried to a few large cities, from whence they are exported, and the returns pursue the same route. If foreign importations are prohibited or diminished, and factories scattered sufficiently through the States to become markets for culinary goods, it must diminish or render unnecessary this coasting trade. But if this should not happen, and these factories should be so partially located, as to make some coasting trade necessary, yet the insufficiency of their manufactures to meet the demand, and the diminution of exchanges, must greatly impair it. ”

“ In the matter of trade, we are anxious to find out how well disposed the United States is in giving our products equitable treatment, and how willing it is to remove tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. ”

“ One of the chief complaints against the protective system is its alleged hindrance to foreign trade and a foreign market for our own products. It is argued that if we could import raw material from other countries free, and manufacture such raw material into products for use, we could export them at great profit, and thus secure a standing in the markets of the world. ”

“ A really wise policy should aim at making a country independent of foreign supply, but this should be effected without resorting to the pitiful shifts of customs duties and prohibitions. Industries must work out their own salvation, competition is the life of trade. ”

“ If the fact be, that by allowing to foreigners a participation in our machinery, we enable them to produce any of our leading articles of export, at a lower money price than we can sell those articles, it is certain that unless we possess as great an advantage in the production of the machinery itself as we have in the production of other articles by means of machinery, the permitting of its exportation would alter to our disadvantage the division of the benefit of trade. Our exports being diminished, we should have to pay a balance in money. ”

“ But the great national policy of putting a duty upon imports is, that it either keeps the foreign trade in our own hands, or draws something for the defence of the country from every foreigner who participates in it with us. ”

“ Investors, demanding interest payments from foreign debtors, will no longer be able to maintain the attitude that imports menace the prosperity of the country and should be cut down by the restrictions of the tariff. Exporters will find that the current is set against them, and that they can broaden their market only as they stimulate still greater growth in the import trade. ”

“ It proves that a balance of trade in imported commodities, excites industry by increasing enjoyments, and by furnishing a surplus for re-exportation; and that it augments wonderfully both national wealth and strength. The abundance of commodities invited by a freedom of commerce, enables the re-exporting merchant to make up cargoes fitted for their destination, more speedily and cheaply, than in ports stripped of variety by commercial restrictions ”

“ The truth is, that the theory of the Balance of Trade should be precisely reversed. The profits accruing to the nation from any foreign commerce should be calculated by the overplus of the importation above the exportation. ”

“ Of the problems that still confront us, the most serious one, and one that is important to national self-respect as well as economic life, is the problem of improving our foreign exchange earnings. With our rapid growing population and in our present stage of industrialization, our country must trade in order to live acceptably well. The limits of easy import substitution have been reached, and substantial overcapacities already exist in many industry lines. ”

“ Your moneyism with its constant devaluations, foreign exchange panics, oppressive custom duties, and tariffs on imports and exports, creating economic disruption, with different standards of life, is one of the main causes for the prevention of free trade and unity between your nations. ”

“ A danger to foreign trade is that our exports might conceivably be limited to certain quarters, and might thus rest upon a frail and shifting foundation. Fortunately, however, this is not so, for our commerce is being built upon the prosperity of the whole world. ”

“ A comparison with a country like, say, the United States, which produces both its food and raw materials at home, must be therefore entirely misleading; the problems to be solved are of a different nature altogether. We are compelled to import in order to End for our population both subsistence and employment; to pay for such imports we have to render services to foreign countries, either by sending them our own goods, or by finding them capital or means of transport, or in such other ways as our position as the clearing house of the world may induce them to require work done for them here. ”

“ Although then the rise in the price of most of our own commodities, would for a time check exportation generally, and might permanently prevent the exportation of a few commodities, it could not materially interfere with foreign trade, and would not place us under any comparative disadvantage as far as regarded competition in foreign markets. ”

“ Its ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade. It discourages the exportation of the materials of manufacture, and of the instruments of trade, in order to give our own workmen an advantage, and to enable them to undersell those of other nations in all foreign markets; and by restraining, in this manner, the exportation of a few commodities, of no great price, it proposes to occasion a much greater and more valuable exportation of others. ”

“ It was shown, however, in our analysis of the effects of international trade, as it had been often shown by former writers, that the importation of foreign commodities, in the common course of traffic, never takes place, except when it is, economically speaking, a national good, by causing the same amount of commodities to be obtained at a smaller cost of labour and capital to the country. To prohibit, therefore, this importation, or impose duties which prevent it, is to render the labour and capital of the country less efficient in production than they would otherwise be ”

“ They have discovered that there is such a thing as a nation increasing its imports enormously and beyond all example, and at the same time its exports declining in the same proportion, from the abstraction of the circulating medium requisite to carry on domestic fabrics. All this is what the Protectionists constantly predicted would follow the adoption of free trade principles; and they warned government in the most earnest manner two years ago, that no increase of exports, but the reverse, would follow the throwing open our ports to foreign grain ”

“ Our exports, in consequence of these different frauds, appear upon the custom-house books greatly to overbalance our imports, to the unspeakable comfort of those politicians, who measure the national prosperity by what they call the balance of trade. ”

“ Perfect free trade consists in the absence of restrictions on both sides.... We cannot combat rival tariffs, directly or indirectly, without subjecting British industry to severe depressions in relation to foreign industry and foreign labour.... To lay suitable duties upon the production of the foreigner, who lays burthens upon yours, does not give the monopoly of the home market to the home producer, nor turn towards any particular employment more capital and labour than would naturally go there. ”

“ It amounts to a pure and unqualified admission of the real truth, that Free Trade was intended to operate, and must operate, solely for the benefit of the exporting houses, to the ruin of all other interests in the country ”

“ These men know, from the lessons taught by their every-day transactions, that the existing miscalled system of Free Trade cannot be much longer persevered in without producing widespread ruin, and ultimate disaffection and anarchy. To enable us to increase our imports profitably, we must first have a corresponding increase of the ability of our own people to consume. To enable us to carry on a profitable trade in exports, we must first render the home producer of manufactures and other products less dependent than at present upon the foreign market ”

“ And neither we nor the members of the European Common Market are so affluent that we can long afford to shelter high cost farms or factories from the winds of foreign competition, or to restrict the channels of trade with other nations of the free world. If the Common Market should move toward protectionism and restrictionism, it would undermine its own basic principles. This Government means to use the authority conferred on it last year by the Congress to encourage trade expansion on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world. ”

“ Perhaps the worst of the three fallacies, and in a sense the deepest-rooted, is the concept of export trade as of more value than import trade. This is often traced back to the time when governments deemed it desirable to accumulate in their countries treasures of gold and silver and to this end encouraged the sale of goods abroad and discouraged the payment for them in foreign goods. ”