Policy Spotlight: Free Trade

Free trade used to be one of those rare subjects on which most Republicans and Democrats could find agreement. That is, until the present Age of Trump, in which free trade has become something like a combination of Obamacare, cap-and-trade, and Common Core, with any who still support it being branded a RINO. It’s also notable as probably the only issue on which Trump has remained consistent for the past thirty years.

Consistently wrong anyway, unlike many other policies in which he manages to hold a principled, conservative stance for at least a few minutes before changing his mind again. Free trade as a general policy is good for the country, and is a natural outgrowth of conservative principles.

The entire goal of free trade is to lessen artificial barriers to trade, such as tariffs and excessive government regulation, and allow the free market to flourish. Protectionist policies such as increased tariffs, meanwhile, stifle that free market—choking healthy competition and ultimately hurting consumers. Free trade is good for the same reason that a domestic economy of low taxes and deregulation is good—it promotes a capitalist economic system in which businesses are allowed to compete on an equal playing field, and consumers have more freedom to make their own individual decisions.

In addition, competition encourages innovation, which ultimately helps businesses and individuals, as well as the economy; whereas a lack of competition encourages only stagnation. There are winners and losers from free trade agreements, to be sure, just as there are in any economic system, but overall these agreements help the country and individual citizens far more, particularly in the long run, than more protectionist trade policies.

This is not to say that every free trade agreement is a good deal. Not every agreement is created equal, and some can easily be used to encode, by way of an international treaty, certain policies binding on America that may be only loosely related to trade at all. Climate change and stricter environmental protections is one such example of this. But each trade deal should be examined on its own merits—and the fact remains that free trade, like capitalism, illustrates the point that when government allows market forces to play out, far more individuals will benefit than any protectionist policy of increased tariffs and regulations.