World trade

“ World trade allows all nations to share in the great economic, social, and political progress of our age and provides a foundation for a more peaceful and stable world. This week, we recognize the importance of free trade in promoting prosperity and freedom in the United States and around the world. ”

“ 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 very few great empires and nations today control the whole available supplies of many of the foods, fabrics, and metals, the shipping and finance, that are essential to the livelihood and progress of every civilized people. Are Britain, America, France, and Japan—and especially the two greatest of these powers—going to absorb or monopolize for their exclusive purposes of trade or consumption these supplies which every country needs, or are they going to let the rest of the world have fair access to them? ”

“ Putting the issue roughly, but with substantial truth, the generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities, as, for instance, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, etc., are engaged in striving, each to win for itself, and at the expense of the others, the largest possible share of a strictly limited objective—the world market. ”

“ That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country.
That the maxim of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings, is strictly applicable as the best rule for the trade of the whole nation. [Pg 699]
That a policy founded on these principles would render the commerce of the world an interchange of mutual advantages, and diffuse an increase of wealth and enjoyments among the inhabitants of each State. ”

“ From a practical point of view, to analyze American foreign trade in detail would be an endless and useless task. It has grown to be what it is through exports of food-stuffs and raw materials, followed naturally by the surplus products of manufacturing. Of imports the same may be said, reversing the order of the progression. The land furnished the material, and labor came at its call from all parts of the world. ”

“ The loss of our abnormal position in foreign trade will be a blessing if we exercise foresight. In the furtherance of the World-purpose it was necessary that the progressive nations should for a time worship foreign trade as a fetich, and as the chief means of prosperity. ”

“ Silks stand here for sample of all French commodities of whatever name and cottons for all English goods whatsoever; and England and France stand in the illustration for any and all nationalities. Any nation obtains any share or a greater share in the commerce of the world solely in virtue of a greater relative efficiency in producing something valuable, as compared with some other nation's power in producing something else that is valuable.
4. How does the varying play of International Demand affect the value of articles in foreign trade? ”

“ This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. ”

“ In a sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of this sort has always been true in international trade, the process reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and continued activity. ”

“ It is a change that has affected the entire world, [Pg 184] bringing about an entirely new trade with the New World and the antipodes, and completely altering the character of the trade with the East, depriving spices of the peculiar value which they held in commerce for so many centuries, and developing a trade of incomparably greater magnitude with the East than was at one time ever dreamt of, and largely in commodities of a bulky character yielding comparatively little profit on small quantities. ”

“ Thus trade has an evident tendency towards the improvement of the world in general, by rendering the inhabitants of one country industrious, in order to supply the wants of another, without any prejudice to themselves. ”

“ The vulgar theory disregards this benefit, and deems the advantage of commerce to reside in the exports: as if not what a country obtains, but what it parts with, by its foreign trade, was supposed to constitute the gain to it. An extended market for its produce—an abundant consumption for its goods—a vent for its surplus—are the phrases by which it has been customary to designate the uses and recommendations of commerce with foreign countries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lists of imports and exports and of the places from which they flowed to and from the centres of trade, as they swelled in bulk from time to time, show how busily and steadily the threads of commerce had been weaving together the labour and interests of mankind, and extending a security and bounty of existence unknown in former ages. ”

“ We send school-books and machinery to China; she sends us tea, matting, and bamboo. The whole right theory of trade is a give-and-take between men and nations, based on a just price, and with a deep law of Value, not yet wholly formulated, underlying each transaction. ”

“ The case which we have just examined, is an example in how remarkable a manner every cause which materially influences exports, operates upon the prices of imports. According to the ancient theory of the balance of trade, and to the associations of the generality of what are termed practical men to this day, the sole benefit derived from commerce consists in the exports, and imports are rather an evil than otherwise. ”

“ The countries not possessing a native supply, could obtain it only by what was called a favourable balance of trade, that is to say, by exporting to a value exceeding that of their imports, and receiving the difference in money. ”

“ But when two countries exchange with each other the commodities which each has some comparative facility for producing, each country is permanently benefited, and therefore such a trade will be lasting and stable in its character. ”

“ Suppose that we had no cotton, corn or pork to give in exchange for our imports, and that we produced a thousand millions dollars’ worth of gold per annum, should we not be equally well conditioned to trade with Europe? ”

“ Not content with exporting the various productions of their own country, they carry on the trade of various parts of the globe, which, but for their instrumentality, could not have obtained, or ever have become acquainted with each other's produce. ”

“ To reduce the cost of production, facilitate the shipping of goods, and meet the local needs of foreign markets, or in other words to conduct foreign trading on an intelligent and scientific basis, is the one hope of the people of the United States in the world expansion of their industries and the profitable employment of labor. ”

“ The balance of produce and consumption may be constantly in favour of a nation, though what is called the balance of trade be generally against it. A nation may import to a greater value than it exports for half a century, perhaps, together ”

“ I do not doubt that a very largely increased foreign trade is accessible to us without bartering for it either our home market for such products of the farm and shop as our own people can supply or the wages of our working people. ”

“ 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; ”

“ Another obvious application of the same principle will enable us to explain, and to bring within the dominion of strict science, the rivality of one exporting nation and another, or what is called, in the language of the mercantile system, underselling: a subject which political economists have taken little trouble to elucidate, from the habit before alluded to of disregarding almost entirely, in their purely scientific inquiries, those circumstances which affect the trade of a country by operating immediately upon the exports. ”

“ We are told that we produce more than this country can consume, and must have foreign markets in which to sell our surplus products. Well, must we own the countries with which we wish to trade? Is not this a notion ludicrously barbarous? ”

“ The sum of the doctrine of the writers of the work on the subject of foreign commerce is given in the following words:—"That trade which makes money flow in most plentifully upon us, enables our people to subsist themselves better by their labour, raises the value of our lands, and occasions our rent to be better paid, must always be reckoned the best trade; for these are the only rules by which it is possible to state and determine the value of any particular trade, or of the general trade of the whole nation." ”

“ The merchant, in order to save a second loading and unloading, endeavours always to sell in the home market, as much of the goods of all those different countries as he can; and thus, so far as he can, to convert his carrying trade into a foreign trade of consumption. ”

“ In these great channels, the domestic exchanges represent an annual value perhaps twenty-five times as great as the total of exports and imports. It is the enjoyment of free-trade and protection at the same time which has contributed to the unexampled development and marvelous prosperity of the United States. ”

“ In the so-called political economies of our forefathers we read a vast deal about the advantages to a country of having an international trade. It was supposed to be one of the great secrets of national prosperity, and a chief study of the nineteenth-century statesmen seems to have been to establish and extend foreign commerce.--Now, Paul, will you tell us the economic theory as to the advantages of foreign commerce? ”

“ It is quite clear to my mind that the effect of our large foreign trade has been distinctly in the direction of lowering the value of money in our market, and consequently an undoubted aid to our industries. ”

“ But if any of our people are sighing for a foreign market, and value it more highly than our own, they can import foreign raw material practically free of duty, and after advancing it into the higher forms of manufacture, can go out and possess the world’s markets. ”

“ The direct benefits of commerce consist in increased Efficiency of the productive powers of the World. From this exposition we perceive in what consists the benefit of international exchange, or, in other words, foreign commerce. Setting aside its enabling countries to obtain commodities which they could not themselves produce at all, its advantage consists in a more efficient employment of the productive forces of the world. ”

“ If they were entirely separate, without political or commercial connection, it is manifest, that the consumption of the manufacturing states of foreign articles could not exceed twenty millions, the sum at which the value of their exports, of domestic products, and the profit of their foreign trade is estimated. ”

“ The subject of foreign exchange should be familiar, the fluctuations having an important bearing on purchasing power and trade, while exchange itself is dependent on foreign trade conditions, being an index of international transactions. ”

“ Countries which export food, have the former advantage, but not the latter. But our own colonies, and the countries which supply us with the materials of our manufactures, maintain a hard struggle with us for an equal share of the advantages of their trade; for their exports are also of a kind for which there exists a most extensive demand here, and a demand capable of almost indefinite extension by a fall of price. ”

“ An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each, by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A matter of prime importance is that the entire nation and people become convinced of the value, the necessity even, of our maintaining a large export and import trade, for we cannot have one without the other. ”

“ International shipment of money is always just the amount needed to balance the accounts due. The proposition that in the long run the value of imports must equal the value of exports, while the fundamental truth in the theory of international trade, must be understood in a broad sense. ”